Wisconsin Hoofers

The Wisconsin Hoofers of the Wisconsin Union is a group of outdoor recreational clubs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, operated by the Wisconsin Union Directorate.

The Wisconsin Hoofers was begun in 1920 by a group of Norwegian exchange students who built a ski jump on the UW-Madison campus by Lake Mendota. The club was originally called the Badger Ski Club. Porter Butts, the first director of the Memorial Union (Wisconsin), was instrumental in establishing the Wisconsin Hoofers. The first Hoofers club, a skiing and outing club, was established in 1931, modeled after the Dartmouth Outing Club. The name "hoofers" is similar to the term "heelers" used for the new members of the Dartmouth club and reportedly was designed to imply "getting there under your own power." In 1976 Hoofers listed over 5,600 members.

The emblem of the club in its current form is the capital "W" overlaid by the horseshoe (which looks like "U", thus alluding to the "U of W").

The Hoofer Sailing Club operates at Memorial Union, on the south shoreline of Lake Mendota on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. It has a fleet of more than 120 boats, sailboards and kites. The club has around 1,000 members, but has had upwards of 1,500 members in the past. It is believed to be the second-largest inland sailing club in the country. The club has a highly-active instruction program, with thousands of lessons each season taught by paid and volunteer staff. Members have free access to use equipment after they have completed their instruction and earned a certification. In the winter months, the club has on-land classes and a snow-kiting program.

The club also hosts the University of Wisconsin undergraduate sailing team, nicknamed Wisco, which competes in the Intercollegiate Sailing Association.

The sailing club originated in 1939 as an all-volunteer club whose members maintained boats and taught each other how to sail on wooden dinghies. Peter Barrett brought the first wooden Tech dinghy from M.I.T. in the 1950s, and it became the club's signature boat. Peter and Olaf Harken modified M.I.T.'s fiberglass Tech design with air tanks under the gunwales, so that a capsized boat could be righted and come up mostly dry, to create the Badger Tech dinghy. The two brothers founded their first company, Vanguard Sailboats, to construct a fleet of these boats.

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