One Ball Jay began as an experimental surf wax project in 1985 Jay Rota (a.k.a. One Ball Jay) and Matt Cummins were introduced to surfing by Mike Olson and Peter Saari of Mervin Manufacturing. During the summer, skateboarding was their main focus and surfing proved to be a fresh alternative. In the midst of surfing and driving to the beach, they decided to try making their own surf wax. As the rainy season rolled in, the time spent skateboarding and surfing warped into time spent snowboarding. In order to get their homemade boards to move they created their own snowboard wax to get their boards to move, which later turned into "One Ball Jay."