There was a time—not long ago, but long enough to miss—when one of the most sacred deliveries a teenage athlete could receive wasn’t a scholarship offer or a letter from a coach. It was a glossy, stapled magazine that came in the mail. Not the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue—though that got plenty of attention too—but the one that really got your heart racing.
Eastbay.To the uninitiated, it might’ve looked like any other catalog. But for those of us who lived and breathed high school sports in the ’90s and early 2000s, Eastbay wasn’t just a magazine. It was a lifeline. A teammate on paper. A loyal friend. It was Christmas morning twelve times a year.
Growing up with a size 13 foot meant choices at the mall were limited. Correction—nonexistent. Especially for twin brothers. Sporting goods stores might stock up to size 12 if you were lucky, but anything beyond that? Forget it. There was nothing worse than finding one pair left and having only one of us walk out with shoes—and a weeklong argument to follow. Eastbay was the solution. My cleats, my basketball sneakers, my track spikes—if they came from anywhere, they came from that catalog. And thankfully, they came in pairs.
And oh, the anticipation. The way you’d run to the mailbox, fingers crossed. The way you’d flip each page like you were decoding a treasure map. Fila Grant Hill 2. Jordan 12s. Penny Air Foamposite One. Adidas Superstars. Some kids read Sports Illustrated for the cover stories. We read Eastbay for the team shoes in six different colorways and the reversible mesh jerseys.
Circling items with a pen was practically a ritual. You didn’t just browse—you planned. You dreamed. You strategized your next season around those pages. And when someone at school mentioned not being able to find a certain shoe? It was like you showed up from thin air, flipping open your fresh issue—coming to the rescue like some kind of gear-slinging superhero.
Honestly, half my wardrobe came from Eastbay. Jackets, college team shorts, And1 shirts, tear away pants—it had everything. I didn’t walk into a sporting goods store for years—because I didn’t need to. Eastbay had it all. To me, it was Amazon before Amazon. I ordered with a phone call and a catalog number and my grandma’s credit card. Two weeks later, a box showed up on the porch like magic. No better feeling than ripping it open. I swear a glow formed inside each box when you lifted the lid.
For a generation of athletes, it’s hard to remember a time without Eastbay—it felt like it had always been part of the game. It’s wild to think that something so essential to our sports lives started from something so small back in the early ’80s.
In 1980, Richard Gering and Art Juedes took $7,000 worth of running shoes and started doing shoe clinics out of Wausau, Wisconsin. By 1983, they had a catalog. By 1989, they were handling team sales. And in 1990, Eastbay stamped its own logo on jackets, socks, and shorts, becoming not just a distributor, but a brand.
Their empire grew until it nearly filled a city block in Wausau. That was the first time I ever heard of Wausau, Wisconsin—Eastbay taught me geography right alongside gear. By 1995, Eastbay had gone public. Two years later, it was acquired by Woolworth and eventually became part of the Foot Locker family.
At its peak, Eastbay wasn’t just selling gear. It was shaping identity. You could tell what sport someone played just by the items circled in their issue. A quarterback wanted the Nike Shark cleats. A hooper circled the Nike Air Maestros. A sprinter drew stars around the spikes. It was how you told the world who you were before you stepped on the field. You held your identity in your hands.
But by the 2010s, the digital world had taken over. The same e-commerce boom that made online shopping easier than ever eventually made print catalogs feel outdated—even the mighty Eastbay. Screens replaced pages. Clicks replaced circles. The ritual started to fade.
And time, as it always does, moved on.
In 2022, Foot Locker announced Eastbay’s distribution center would close. The website went dark on January 13, 2023. Over 200 people in Wausau lost their jobs. The magazine that once sat on bedroom floors next to algebra books and practice jerseys or stuffed in book bags between homework and scouting reports—faded into the archives of memory.
Yet ask this 46-year-old former athlete what Eastbay meant to him, and I’ll smile. Maybe even tear up. It wasn’t just about gear. It was about belief—that somewhere in Wisconsin, someone cared enough to stock size 13s for a couple big-footed kids with big dreams.
Eastbay may be gone now, absorbed into the digital ether and corporate rebrands. But it lives on in the muscle memory of a generation who flipped its pages like scripture.
We didn’t just shop Eastbay—we dreamed through it. We circled possibilities. We built ourselves in those margins.
And now, looking back, there’s a sadness that creeps in. Not because kids today don’t get gear—they do, probably faster than we ever did. But it’s different. My kids will never know what it was like to run to the mailbox, to circle their dreams in ink, to flip through pages that felt like they were made just for them. The magic hasn’t disappeared—but the ritual has. And something about that feels like a loss.
It’s funny how the big endings in life never announce themselves. They sneak past quietly—just another day, another delivery, another tournament.
There is a nostalgic quote: At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time—and nobody knew it.
I get it now.
Just like at some point, you opened an Eastbay, circled some gear for an upcoming game, and didn’t realize you’d never do it again.
For us, that moment came quietly—no ceremony, no warning. Just my brother and I getting ready for the annual Kiwanis alumni basketball tournament. We needed new shorts. Not just any shorts—this year it was Duke team shorts. Blue and white. No need to travel to Keokuk (IA) or Quincy (IL) to find a pair. We placed the order without a second thought. Just another Eastbay run.
Only later did it hit us: that was it. That was the last time we’d ever place an Eastbay order. The last time we’d flip through the pages, fill in the order number, and wait for the delivery to arrive. We weren’t just gearing up for one more game—we were closing the book without knowing it.
So no, Eastbay didn’t fold. It just retired—like a great coach who knew it was time after decades of showing up for athletes who needed it most. Eastbay may not deliver anymore. But it already gave us everything we needed.
And if you ever find one of those old issues buried in a box—creased, scribbled on, pages worn thin—don’t throw it out.
It’s not junk mail. That’s a time machine.
That's a generation’s playbook.
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