OKOBOJI, Iowa | Bob Shaw, Jeff Athey, Ron Penning, Mike Peschon, Bill Eich, Tom Burns and Chuck Wedeking won four broom ball games for the Shaw Paint Glass & Locksmithing team in 1981.
And, thus, the University of Okoboji Winter Games was born.
Shaw, a coach at Spirit Lake High School from 1976-1980, split the $100 cash prize for the tournament that started it all.
The trophy? That, he kept. He'd gotten it in the first place, obtained from a storage bin at Spirit Lake High. The trophy was from some girls extracurricular event at the high school.
That original "gold standard" has since been replace with thousands of medals, ribbons, coffee mugs, pins and trophies. Recent broom ball trophies, in fact, measure about three feet in length.
Such is the nature of the University of Okoboji Winter Games, which celebrates its 34th edition January 24-26. What started as a small, but fun, way to beat the cold has blossomed into a multi-million-dollar party in a place that's grown with these icy competitions.
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Estimates vary, with high-end predictions calling for 50,000 fun-seekers to converge on the Dickinson County tourism mecca.
The 2014 edition will surely have one aspect of its Winter Games covered, if the weather continues its chilly march through December: Winter.
Not all Winter Games have enjoyed ice, snow and defrosters in full throttle. The 2002, 2006 and 2012 editions moved off Smith's Bay as the ice -- if there was ice -- wasn't deemed safe for winter activity.
Okoboji-area fire departments responded to a grass fire north of Vick's Corner during the last weekend of January in 2012. A New York Times reporter was dispatched to Okoboji in 2002 for a story on the fictional university hosting an event in what appeared to be a fictional winter season.
High temperatures during these games have risen to 64 degrees in 2002 and dropped as low as 54 degrees below zero, a windchill reading recorded in 1998.
This year? According to Jeremy Morrison, everything is looking up. Or down, as the case may be.
"We've got real good ice right now and good cover of snow," says Morrison, a co-chair for the 2014 event. "We got four to five inches of snow and have had several days of real cold weather."
Should that consistency in cold temps continue, the ice by the end of this month would be plenty thick for a variety of Smith's Bay events, ranging from broom ball to hockey to snowmobile poker runs to the ever-popular polar plunge, a brief dunk in the drink, as it were.
The plunge ranks among Morrison's favorite activities.
"I've done the polar plunge and I kind of liked it," says Morrison, a Buena Vista University graduate who moved to Milford, Iowa, with his wife, Kelcey Morrison, to start a firm, Bonfire Web & Marketing Company. "I did the plunge about five years ago. We moved up here and a bunch of our friends from Kansas City came up as they'd never seen a lake frozen like this before."
The Morrisons' friends came from south of Kansas City, Mo., where large bodies of water don't entirely freeze over.
As the owner of a company featuring the world "Bonfire," it is the lighting of the greens on Saturday night during the Winter Games that burns bright for Morrison.
"The burning and the greens and the fireworks on Saturday night is my favorite event now," he says. "The bars have live music and there are so many people here. It's like the Fourth of July in the middle of winter."
That was part of the aim in 1981 when Shaw joined Tom Kuhlman in starting these Winter Games. Shaw wanted pull people out of their winter slumber; Kuhlman, executive vice president of the Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce, sought the physical activity, as well as a mid-winter economic boost for the region.
It worked. The area has surged in value and population since the early 1980s, a time when lakeside homes barely topped six figures. Those same homes can now approach and surpass seven digits.
And many of the venues hosting 2014 events weren't even around 34 years ago. The Dickinson County Expo Building, for example, will host a couple of thousand guests for the ever-popular Chili Cook Off, a Friday night gala that serves as an opening ceremony of sorts.
There are also new events this year, including a fishing tournament, a mountain bike race featuring bikes with fat tires to handle the snow and frozen turkey bowling.
"There's a new kids' carnival in the Boji Bay Fun House down in Milford," says Morrison. "We'll have jumping houses and face painting there, something that brings more of a family focus into the Winter Games."
Morrison points out that, no, a 5-year-old should not be out in extreme cold all day. Therefore, the kids' carnival -- and other events like it -- put activity and safety at the forefront.
There's also a trivia contest this year and a scavenger hunt inviting competitors to venture out to take photos that help solve University of Okoboji riddles.
