Recreation / San Diego : It’s Boogie Time : Bodyboarding Provides a Less Expensive Alternative to Surfing

Unlike its venerable cousin, surfing, the sport of bodyboarding hasn’t been around long enough to enrich the English language with colorful new phrases such as hang 10.

Bodyboarding, barely a decade old, has its own jargon-- drop knee, stand up, el rollo-- but the terms are too new to have meaning to a general audience.

There’s even some confusion about how to refer to the board itself. It’s commonly called a Boogie board, which is short for Morey Boogie board, a brand name derived from its inventor, Tom Morey.

After fashioning the first board out of a 33-inch slab of polyethylene in 1971, Morey started a company that began manufacturing the toys in 1975.

Morey later sold the company, which retains the rights to his name. Rival manufacturers are stuck with the generic term bodyboard.

It might have been difficult for Morey to visualize a future generation decked out in baggy, knee-length shorts, cruising down to the beach on a skateboard with a bodyboard in tow.

Morey seemed to regard his board as a means for getting closer to nature. Of course, he didn’t rule out having fun, either.

“Waves are living creatures,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1982, “and (a Boogie board) conforms to the rhythm of the waves. . . . By surfing on the Boogie board, you are communing with the rhythms of nature.”

The Morey philosophy survives in David Cunniff, 22, an All-America freestyle swimmer at Cal State Chico and a highly regarded competitive bodyboarder. He also is a part-time fashion model who has been pictured in Vogue.

“The ocean is a force that gets inside you,” said Cunniff, an instructor this week at the Oceanside Aquatics Camp for youngsters 9 to 15.

“You can just feel those waves drawing you back, day after day. The ocean gets a hold on you and becomes a need you have.”

He was attempting to pass on some of that need to the kids in his aquatics class. Among the interested students were Shawn Johnson, 11, and Adam Molnar, 13, both of Oceanside.

Johnson had grown bored emulating his father’s style of going straight down a wave, so he was thrilled when he learned to do a 360-degree turn on his board.

Molnar, an avid reader of Bodyboarding, a new magazine, has mastered a more advanced trick, the el rollo, in which a rider momentarily disappears under his board.

These tricks didn’t exist when Cunniff took up bodyboarding five years ago after deciding that he was approaching his limits as a surfer.

“It’s different,” he said. “You have a lower center of gravity on a bodyboard, and you don’t always go as fast. But you can really feel every ripple in the surf, and it takes a lot of time and ocean experience (to become expert).”

Some surfers tend to view bodyboarders as less macho, but that’s changing, according to Cunniff. As the sport’s top practitioners devise challenging new maneuvers, bodyboarding gains in respect from surfers.

However it’s viewed, the sport is gaining rapidly in acceptance at beaches in Southern California, on the East Coast and especially in Hawaii and Japan.

There were about 300,000 bodyboards sold in 1985 and 750,000 in the past four years, according to Bodyboarding, which is published in San Clemente.

A bodyboard is a lightweight, inexpensive alternative to a surfboard, and it’s more easily mastered, too.

Bodyboards cost $30 to $130, contrasted with $250 and up for surfboards. There is some additional equipment, including fins for the board and a tether (or leash), which can add another $40 or so to the start-up cost.

A survey undertaken by Bodyboarding determined that the sport’s primary appeal is to young males, 12 to 24, who live within 20 minutes of the ocean.

The question of why more young women aren’t attracted by the sport hasn’t been resolved, according to Mary Lee Christensen, a publicist for Morey Boogie boards.

“We’ve been mulling it for several years,” she said. “It would seem to be an ideal sport for gals since it doesn’t take a lot of strength or power.

“About all we can come up with is that it started as a male sport and has remained that way. But we are trying to encourage women, and we’ve found that lots of gals participate in Hawaii and Japan.”

It may not be the ultimate unisex sport just yet, but Christensen is trying to promote bodyboarding as a wholesome, family-oriented beach activity.

Cunniff, meanwhile, has his own view of the future. He wants to be part of an expanding bodyboarding industry as a researcher, inventor and manufacturer.

“The attitude among surfers is to make just enough money to allow you to hang loose and enjoy yourself,” he said.

“I want a little more than to be a beach bum. I’m a little more materialistic. I wouldn’t mind becoming a yuppie and driving a real nice car.”

As the vehicle for such ambitions, the bodyboard clearly is becoming more than a means of communing with the rhythms of nature.