Alecia Whitaker Pace is experiencing déjà vu.
First it was the overalls. Then New Kids On The Block. “Why is my childhood coming back?” the Long Island, N.Y., mom recently asked. “And now hacky sack?”
The little bean bags that once appeared relegated to the same cultural graveyard as mixtapes and Blockbuster have taken over high-school sports fields, hallways and sometimes classrooms seemingly overnight.
Gen X and millennials couldn’t be more thrilled that a game they popularized is cool again, and that it’s getting kids off their phones. But they’re scratching their heads over its sudden ubiquity—and racing to keep up with new twists to the game.
Sometimes, parents and teachers are pulling tricks of their own. When Whitaker Pace’s son asked her to buy a now hard-to-find hacky sack, she dug out her own crochet bean bag, untouched for decades.
“That young man had the gall to say, ‘You played hacky sack?’” the 46-year-old laughed. “I can’t believe I finally did it. I just impressed my two teenage boys.”
The game is in many ways the same: Players work together to keep the bag in the air with anything but their hands and arms. But teens are upping the ante as they try to earn their schools a spot on leaderboards published by dedicated social-media accounts.
Amanda Jones said her son and his friends, high-schoolers in South Bend, Ind., use any combination of feet, head, shoulders, neck and back to keep the sack moving—and go viral. In the ’90s, kids mostly just used their feet, she said.
“You have to be young to move like that. I’m telling you, I would be laid out with a broken back,” the 52-year-old said.
Steve Kiely, a teacher and strength and conditioning coach at Boston College High School, recently saw a student launch a hacky sack about 20 to 30 feet to the floor below, where another successfully kept it in the air.
“Within just a few weeks, they’re better hacky-sack players than I ever was,” he said.
Even so, Kiely and other teachers have jumped at the chance to dust off their skills. The 42-year-old incorporated hacky sacks into a recent workout, challenging students to push-ups each time the sack dropped.
“They’re always shocked when we’re better than they think,” he said.
Sometimes the shock is the adult’s. Tera Lawson snuck her son’s new hacky sack when he wasn’t looking to test her rusty skills. Her son made it look so natural, quickly learning to catch the hacky sack between his chin and pop it onto the back of his leg.
“I look at it like, how can’t I pick up where I left off?” said the Hudson, Wis., mom. “But I forgot I’m 49.”
Not all students realize the game is as ancient as their parents and teachers. Educators haven’t been shy about reminding them, said Garrison Conner, head of upper school at Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“They’ve suffered through some reminiscing,” Conner, 39, said. “But in ways, they find it pretty cool that maybe Baylor in the 1990s is not so different than it is today.”
While it’s mostly fun and games, schools face a balancing act.
Assistant Dean of Students Jeff Fauci said he and other faculty ordered a box of hacky sacks to help promote the game at Landmark School in Prides Crossing, Mass. It didn’t take long, though, for some students to bring the game inside on rainy days and even play in the cafeteria, precariously close to the coffee station.
“It hasn’t reached crisis stage yet,” said Fauci, 46, given no one’s ventured to play in class. “I assume that’s coming. It is inevitable.”
Hadley Hazelton wound up in her school nurse’s office after bonking heads with a friend while trying to do a trick she’d seen on social media. There, the Darien, Conn., high-school senior learned she was just one of several hacky-sack-related injuries that week.
After a trip to the ER to get a staple in her scalp, Hazelton’s on a mission to spread the word about the game’s dangers.
“At least for the next week, while I still have the staple in my head, I definitely am just gonna keep a distance,” she said. “But it’s hard, cause it’s kind of everywhere.”
The one thing that’s not everywhere? An ample supply of hacky sacks.
Macrae Hope, an assistant manager at Play It Again Sports in Chesapeake, Va., said at least 15 customers come in a day looking for hacky sacks after he sold out of his stash within days a few weeks ago.
The 20-year-old and his co-workers play among themselves during slow shifts.
“They haven’t done any work in two weeks,” joked the store’s owner, 54-year-old Bob Harrell. “They’re all getting good at it.”
Chris Grouzes, 41, said no one had asked to borrow from his collection of 20 hacky sacks during his nearly two decades of teaching at Penncrest High School in Media, Pa.
But now, Grouzes is lending them out like library books—and fending off a flood of offers to buy them. One student even said he’d try extra hard on a class assignment if Grouzes would at least talk about a potential sale, an offer Grouzes said he politely declined.
“First time a teacher could ever claim that his kids think he’s rich,” he joked.