Hacky Sack - From The Beginning

What is hacky sack? It is a sport which originated in China and other parts of Asia as well as in Native America. Known today as footbag, it was originally invented by two men named John Stalberger and Mike Marshall. The concept encompassed creating a hand-made bean bag that could be kicked around. Eventually, these two men called the game Hacky Sack.

Consequently, Hacky Sack or Footbag developed into different forms of play. While there were footbag net where players volley a hacky sack over a five-foot net, or free-style footbag where players stand in a circle and do tricks with the hacky sacks as they pass it around.

Footbag has become quite popular in Europe and North America. There are footbag clubs and players who compete around the world as well. Utilizing foot to foot battles with the footbags, this sport has many varieties of play, and they compete in footbag tournaments and festivals every year.

There is also freestyle footbag in which difficult moves makes are judged according to choreography, difficulty, variety, and execution. Players choreograph their moves to music, and are judged on how well their style of play matches their choice of music. They are also judged on their originality and creativity. Each move or trick has a difficulty rating.

Players must perform moves that contain elements from five general categories: leg dexterity which means circling the bag with the foot; delays or the method in catching the footbags; spins, fliers, and blind moves; unusual surfaces where footbags are utilized on different parts of the body such as the sole, shin, or head; and cross-body moves are achieved by crossing the foot to the other side of the body. The ability of the players to keep the footbags off the ground while performing these difficult moves is the basis of this sport.

To demonstrate the difficulty of this sport, here are some statistics based on winners of past footbag tournaments:

Women’s Doubles Footbag Tournament - Total Kicks: 34,543 - Total Time: 5 hrs. 38 mins. 22 sec.
Open Doubles Footbag - Total Kicks: 132,011 (previously 123,456) - Total Time: 20 hrs. 34 mins.
Women's Singles - Total Kicks: 24,713 - Total Time: 4 hrs. 9 mins. 27 secs.
Men’s Open 5-Minute Timed - Total Kicks in 5 Minutes: 1019
Women's 5-Minute Timed - Total Kicks in 5 Minutes: 804
Largest Footbag Circle - Total Players: 946.

Hacky Sack, as you can see, is a sport involving the use of footbags and the players’ precision and dexterity in the use of executing difficult moves for a specific length of time. This is, no doubt, an interesting and obviously difficult sport, but one in which everyone involved has a great time in competing with others. Hacky Sacks can be bought from a Hacky Sack (Footbag) Online Shop.