A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

AFA — American Freestyle Association

Before 1982, freestyle didn't have a season. No rankings, no national calendar, no way to settle who was actually the best rider in the country — just jams, magazine photo spreads, and demo tours. Bob Morales built the structure that changed that. For six years the American Freestyle Association ran the sport's first real contest series, turned it into something riders could earn a living at, then folded when the business under it gave out. Here's how it went, straight through.

Where it came from

Bob Morales met Eddie Fiola in 1981. The next year, 1982, he put together a skatepark riding contest and formed an organization to run it — the Amateur Skate Park Association, ASPA. In 1983 he renamed it, keeping the same initials, to the American Skate Park Association, specifically so he could add a paid Pro class. By 1984 Southern California's skateparks were closing one after another, so Morales moved his events off concrete and onto portable wooden ramps set up in parking lots. Freestyle was the word everyone used for it by then, so he renamed the organization one more time — the American Freestyle Association, the AFA — incorporated it, and became its first president. Fiola signed on as the AFA's first member. Morales ran the operation with Don Hoffman as Competition Director and Media, and Susy Q as Secretary and Treasurer.

The format split into vert (ramp) and flatland divisions, with helmets required in every class, flatland included. Riders were sorted into four skill levels — beginner, intermediate, expert, pro — across four age groups: 13 and under, 14-15, 16-18, and 19 and up.

The Masters Series takes off

1985 was the year the AFA built an actual national tour: the Masters Series, five rounds capped by a December final in Manchester, New Hampshire — the sport's first genuinely national freestyle event. Round 1 ran January 26, 1985, in San Diego. Only five pros made the trip that early in the year: Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, Hugo Gonzales, Dave Vanderspek, and Dennis Langlais. Blyther won the pro ramp division, beating all four. That's the same event Legend's own Dave Nourie chapter ties to the Gumby — the handstand-into-twist trick Nourie says he built fifteen minutes before his run. Wilkerson closed out 1985 as AFA year-end champion in ramp, flatland, and overall.

1986 took the series fully national — five rounds across California, Tulsa, Columbus, New York, and Dothan, plus finals at the Velodrome in Compton. The New York round pulled over 300 entries, reported at the time as the biggest freestyle contest anyone had seen. That same year the AFA staged an event at Madison Square Garden — over 200 riders, 5,000 paying spectators. Mike Dominguez won the ramp title; Dennis McCoy took flatland and overall.

1987 ran five more rounds — West Palm Beach, Oregon, Austin, Columbus, Wayne, New Jersey — plus finals with a record $12,500 pro purse, the Socko Finals, backed by new sponsors Socko and Converse. Martin Aparijo won pro flatland, Dominguez repeated at pro ramp, McCoy took the overall. A fourteen-year-old Mat Hoffman, riding for Skyway, won the 14-15 expert ramps title that year. Thirteen-year-old Dave Mirra entered his first-ever competition at Round 4 in Columbus, on a flow deal with Haro.

1988 expanded the series to eight rounds and split the expert class into seven age brackets, moving to a qualifying-round-plus-finals format. Membership passed 4,500 that year, and Long Island hosted the biggest single AFA event on record — over 500 riders. In 1989, at Round 2 in Bristol, Pennsylvania, Kevin Jones debuted the hitchhiker and the backpacker for the first time, per contemporaneous coverage.

Turning tricks into a business

By Morales's own count, AFA membership went from 1,000 in 1985 to 2,000 in 1986, 3,000 in 1987, and past 4,500 by 1988. Affiliate offices opened in Texas, Florida, and New York, then England, France, and Germany. Over one hundred events carried AFA sanctioning in the US in 1987 alone. By 1988, Morales says, professional freestyle riders were out-earning professional BMX racers — top pros were clearing $200,000 a year. Morales ran all of this alongside Dyno, the bike company he'd started and sold to GT in 1985.

The fall

The cracks showed at the 1988 Wichita Finals. Registrations had, per Freestylin' magazine, halved and halved again, and the weak turnout forced a temporary halt. That November the AFA relocated its office to Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Randy Loop took over as president; Morales kept ownership; Krys Dauchy came on as secretary. In 1989 the AFA lost its insurance to run ramp events and went flatland-only — Dennis McCoy was the only pro from the earlier years still competing that season. Morales tried and failed to get freestyle added to the Olympics that year. He concluded the AFA had taken the sport as far as it could go, resigned the presidency, and the headquarters moved to the National Director's office in Ohio. By 1990, GO magazine reported the AFA in limbo, its phone disconnected. Per Morales, the operation scaled back down to his Group B office in California, ran one last series of events, and he closed it for good at the end of 1990 to focus on Group B.

What came after

Wilkerson and Hoffman, both AFA-era riders, built the next generation of freestyle contests on their own terms. Wilkerson put it plainly, years later: Then the AFA disappeared, and it was only the 2-Hip. His own 2-Hip King of Vert series had already been running as a rider-driven alternative since the mid-1980s, and by the time the AFA folded, it was one of the only organized freestyle competitions left standing. The National BMX Hall of Fame's 2018 induction of Morales credits the AFA directly as the first freestyle sanctioning body that paved the way for the Too Hip Series, the BS Series, and modern-day competitions.

Why this matters to Legend Bike Co.

I was one of the first fifteen employees at GT Bicycles while Bob Morales was still around the building, before he left to run the AFA full time in 1986. Eddie Fiola — the AFA's very first member — is the same guy I was loading product into the back of his truck for on my first days at GT. Different corner of the sport than the one I raced and built frames for, but the same era, the same people, the same industry I've spent my whole life in.

What we don't know

No source beyond Legend's own Dave Nourie chapter ties the Gumby trick specifically to that January 1985 San Diego round — the date, the location, and the field of competing pros are independently confirmed, but the trick claim rests on Nourie's own account. And no source spells out a formal handoff from the AFA to any successor organization; Wilkerson's and Hoffman's events grew out of the AFA's example, not out of any organizational transfer.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

Bob Morales · Dave Nourie · Ron Wilkerson · Brian Blyther · Mat Hoffman · Dennis McCoy · Mike Dominguez · Martin Aparijo · Kevin Jones · Dave Mirra · Dyno · Skyway · Haro · GT Bicycles · 2-Hip / King of Vert

The History of BMX (1970-1995)

Sources

23mag.com's AFA company and contest history, citing period issues of BMX Action, Freestylin', and Bicross Magazine by date. Bob Morales's own first-person account, originally published on moralesbikes.com and republished via 23mag.com. Wikipedia, "Freestyle BMX" and "American Freestyle Association." USA BMX National Hall of Fame, Class of 2018 induction writeup for Bob Morales. Wikipedia, "Mat Hoffman" and "Dennis McCoy (BMX rider)." Legend Bike Co.'s own Bob Morales and Dave Nourie chapters, cross-referenced for consistency. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for independent coverage of the January 1985 San Diego round; neither returned material beyond what's cited above at the time of research.