“Odds are, in any moment at GDS, someone’s probably sacking.”
These are the words of sophomore Cameron Toufanian, one of the many students captivated by a new craze sweeping the school: hacky sack.
But what is hacky sack, and why is everyone “sacking?”
Hacky sack is a game where two or more players pass a hacky sack—a small beanbag-like toy—around with any part of their bodies besides their hands. Primarily using their feet, players try to pass the sack as many times as possible while also attempting to pull off tricks, such as toe stalls—where a player catches the sack on the top part of their foot—and back stalls, where a player catches the sack on their back.
“[Hacky sack at GDS] really started with the men’s lacrosse teams because after lacrosse games people would hacky sack with each other,” Toufanian, a player on the men’s lacrosse team, explained. “So the men’s lacrosse team started playing, and then we spread it to people that didn’t play lacrosse, and now it’s much bigger.”
Once hacky sack started becoming popular at GDS—about three weeks ago— students began to form various groups to play with. These groups have evolved into three main “teams.” There is a varsity team that consists of mostly juniors and seniors, a junior-varsity team that consists of sophomores and a freshman team. These teams don’t actually play against other schools, but they give students an opportunity to play with their peers.
The hacky sack obsession isn’t exclusive to GDS. Seven teams in the DMV currently participate in the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAC) hacky sack league. (The league has no official connection to the MAC—an athletics conference that men’s sports teams at GDS compete in—but the seven competing schools in the hacky sack league are all members of the actual MAC, hence the name.)
The MAC hacky sack league runs an Instagram account where the seven teams are ranked weekly based on their skill. The GDS varsity hacky sack team is currently ranked fifth.
“These rankings don’t really mean anything to us,” junior Ahren Sidhu said. “We know that we are the best team in the MAC.”
Despite hacky sack’s seemingly out-of-the-blue appearance, the sport actually predates the new obsession by more than half a century. In 1972, Mike Marshall and John Stalberger invented hacky sack, and the game is now making a comeback.
Each GDS team posts their favorite rally—called a Rally of The Day (ROTD)—to their individual Instagram accounts. The MAC Instagram account then posts a few of their members’ ROTDs to spotlight. So far, GDS hacky sack teams’ ROTDs have been featured three times on the account—there have been 11 total spotlights.
The MAC league takes hacky sack seriously. So far, the league has banned multiple tricks that are considered unfair, including a move called trampolining, which is when a player catches a hacky sack in their shirt and pops it back in the air. And on April 29, the league officially banned playing with the shoe brand Hey Dudes.
“Hey Dudes are banned because of the flat surface [on the top part of the shoe],” sophomore Rafa Westelius said, “which makes it really easy to hit toe stalls.”
The official Instagram post reasoned that the shoes were “built for lounging, not for legends,” and called for players to respect the sport.
“I think that at the end of the day, [the ban] was for the love of the game, and we don’t want anything unfair being present in the hacky sack community,” Sidhu said.
During lunch and community time, students frequently gather in circles and play with their hacky sacks.
“You just get them [hacky sacks], get a circle and start sacking,” Toufanian said. “It’s a really communal sport because you can just leave and stop whenever you want.”
“I’d say [I play] probably for at least thirty minutes a day,” junior Ashwin Pathiyal said.
Some players are naturally more skilled at hacky sack than others. Toufanian explained that foot-eye coordination and body control proves to be useful for the game. “You’ll see, pretty naturally, soccer players will typically excel early,” he said. “But it’s different enough from soccer, and someone who’s never played soccer can be good at it.”
And like soccer, head injuries are always a risk. Westelius said that a student at St. John’s College High School was attempting a back stall when his friend accidentally kicked him in the face and concussed him. He was “knocked out cold,” Westelius said.
“It’s a contact sport,” Toufanian said.
Senior Mikhail Westelius, who is on the men’s varsity soccer team, said he liked hacky sack because he found it similar to dribbling a soccer ball around with friends.
“You know, [hacky] sack for me is less of a game and more of a lifestyle,” junior Lawson Massey said.
“What makes sack fun is the community and playing with friends,” freshman Bobby Joachim said.
There’s a motto that sackers live by—a motto that GDS players in particular can’t stop repeating. Pathiyal repeated those four words, which he said summed up what the sport is all about: “Spread sack, not hate.”