Windsurfing competitors from across the nation have converged on Worthington's Lake Okabena to show off their skills this weekend.
This is the third time this unassuming town of about 12,900 residents has hosted the U.S. Windsurfing National Championships, which usually takes place in coastal communities such as San Diego, Calif.; Maui, Hawaii; Cocoa Beach, Fla.; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Cape Hatteras, N.C.
When locals Bill Keitel and Jeff Hegwer suggested an annual regatta dedicated to the sport 15 years ago, "we were considered wild-eyed dreamers," says Keitel, a recreational windsurfer from Worthington and vice president of U.S. Windsurfing.
The landscape at the time had a few wind turbines pinwheeling on the horizon, but it was nothing like today, with 196 wind turbines churning across Nobles County, he says.
"We're between two of the largest wind fields in the nation," Keitel says, with one stretching to Fargo and the other to Des Moines.
It takes looking at a topographical atlas to see Buffalo Ridge, an expanse of rolling hills on the southeastern tip of Coteau des Prairie, a 100-mile-wide plateau that sprawls for 200 miles across northeastern South Dakota into southwestern Minnesota. Even Joseph Nicollet, the first European explorer to map the area in the 1830s, noted in his journal that "the wind is elastic, and there are no trees to stop its progression," Keitel said.
The beautiful but often overlooked coteau topography enriches the scenery straddling the South Dakota and Minnesota border, but those virtues can be hard to detect in the flat-looking prairie farmland surrounding Worthington. But that magnificence can certainly be felt in the wind that funnels into the area, shutting down Interstates during winter blizzards and inspiring recreation by summer.
Fun for spectators
