What once started as a simple club, hacky sack is now a Friday morning tradition for some students who come to the blacktop to play their whole high school career.
Hacky sack is a non-competitive American sport that involves kicking a small ball or hacky sack and keeping it off the ground for as long as you can. It was invented in 1972, but soon found its way to Mcneil in 2018.
“Some of the girls on the golf team and the soccer team asked me about starting the hacky sack club,” club sponsor and golf coach Matt Hoover said. “Some of them knew that I’d done hacky when I was a kid in high school, so they asked me to start it, and it instantly became a big success.”
Senior club president Qiana Washington said to play hacky sack you need a small group of people, and a small ball or hacky sack. The rules are simple; You are not allowed to drop the ball or hacky sack and you are not allowed to touch the ball or hacky sack with your hands, but you can head it, knee it, chest it, and kick it.
“My hacky strategy is to just get behind people that are already out so I don’t get hit,” Washington said. “Hacky is a combination of soccer and other stuff, so as a soccer player I use my coordination from there to try and win.”
Another popular strategy for many hacky players is to team up with one another and go for individual players attempting to get them out, but once there are only a few players left, they’re all on their own.
“Me and a couple of the guys from the soccer team play together and tag team a little bit trying to get other people out,” junior Nick Pickrell said. “But once there are only ten-ish people left, no one is teaming up anymore.”
Junior Sofia Rodgers said hacky sack sparked interest in a lot of soccer players, both boys and girls, because of the footwork needed to be successful in the game.
“The soccer team, mostly like the seniors now, invited me to hacky,” Rodgers said. “It was just a fun thing to do, and I think it brought our team closer, bonding while playing together.”
Once mainly full of soccer players, word of hacky sack spread throughout the school, branching out to different people and sports other than soccer.
“I’ve met so many new people from hacky,” junior Peyton Trost said. “It has really grown, so many new people have joined this year, and there’s a lot of new opportunities to branch out to new people, it even started to spread out to multiple sports.”
The club’s consistent popularity had made it stand out in student life at McNeil, maintaining large turnouts year after year.
“It became one of the most popular clubs at Mcneil,” Hoover said. “It’s been a great thing for the school and for the students, we average about 50 students every year it’s always pretty consistent, depending on the weather, but usually somewhere between 40 to 75 students every week.”
Some students are in their fourth year of hacky, making memories and watching the club grow throughout the years.
“My favorite memory had to have been when I tore my ACL and I played the last day before I got surgery and I won,” Washington said. “It’s been so exciting to see how hacky has turned into a school-wide activity.”
