CALENDAR

Surf’s up

Ohio shredders show you can hang ten even in a landlocked city far from the coast.

BY VICTORIA ELLWOOD

Downtown Dayton is your typical urban Midwestern city, filled with blacktop and busy streets, high-rises, and noisy traffic.

But wait: There are also surfers, who are apt to be happily catching a wave out on the water. That’s right. They’re hangin’ loose in the heartland, where river surfing is catching on, hooking surf-newbies and seasoned devotees alike, who find a sweet spot on the Great Miami River.

River surfing is similar to ocean surfing, but instead of catching waves caused by the wind, it’s done on standing river waves created by flowing whitewater. “It’s a rush,” says Shannon Thomas, a Dayton native and pro river surfer and paddleboarder. “Anyone who has surfed knows that special feeling you get when you’re on a wave. It’s amazing; very spiritual, very addictive.” Always an avid kayaker, Thomas quickly fell in love with river surfing and whitewater paddleboarding. He spent a few years traveling around the country, living out of a van with his dog, Bailey, and searching for perfect waves from Florida to Colorado.

Today, he’s back in his landlocked hometown, where he and business partner Jake Brown own Surf Dayton, a river surfing and SUP (stand-up paddleboarding) operation they launched in 2017. Jake, a former ocean lifeguard and avid surfer in California, recently returned to Ohio and is a Dayton firefighter. “Any excuse to be out on the water, and I was there,” Thomas says. “I had been river surfing in Dayton for a while and figured if I was going to stay here, why not share the surfing culture with others? From there, it has snowballed.”