WORK IN PROGRESS
UNEDITED / UNPUBLISHED
As a sport, footbag is unique. Almost any other sport imaginable requires specific conditions and environ-ments, things like props, flooring, venues, netting, tools, obstacles, protective clothing, goals, team-mates, and opponents. In stark contrast, the sport of footbag can be played anywhere with just a foot and a bag. Only juggling rivals footbag as a sport one person can play literally anywhere at any time.
Footbag has evolved into a fairly challenging modern-day sport, involving complex freestyle mechanics and specific parameters defining its net volley game, but humans have been kicking small sacks into the air for centuries. As early as 476 BC, the Chinese were kicking (cu) a small leather ball stuffed with feathers (ju) in a game they logically called cuju. This game was an ancient precursor to what we know today as soccer. One variation, zhuqiu, was played as a competitive sport involving goals while the other, baida, was more like a kicking circle where the object was to cooperatively keep the ball in the air with the help of teammates.1 The Japanese game of kemari evolved from this cooperative cuju variant and eliminated any winners or losers.
Over time, similar kicking games swept across Asia that involved volleying a ball or shuttlecock between opposing sides, sometimes clearing a net. These games included chapteh in Malaysia, jianzi in China, đá cầu in Vietnam, and sipa in the Philippines. Fifteen hundred years ago in Myanmar (Burma), a game developed called chinlone that’s still played today. The term chinlone means “rounded basket,”2 which describes its large woven rattan sphere, identical to the rattan balls of kataw in Laos and sepak takraw in Indonesia.
The most recent Asian iteration of a foot-centric net volley game is called jokgu, developed in the 1960s by members of the South Korean Air Force.3 It’s played exactly like many of its net game precursors, but with a volleyball.
In North America, loose variations of what we call footbag have been enjoyed by native peoples for centuries. In 1901, small kicking balls called boop tcje were collected at the Crow Reservation in southern Montana by journalist S. C. Simms. He described them as “juggling footballs” and reported that women of the Crow Tribe played a game whose object was to “keep the ball in the air the longest time by kicking it or by the greatest number of kicks without a miss.”4
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied was a German explorer who detailed the activities of native peoples of the American Great Plains in his 1840 book, Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas (Travels in the Interior of North America). In it, Prince Maximilian spoke of the Mandan Tribe of North Dakota: “The women are expert in playing with a large leathern ball which they let fall alternately on their foot and knee, again throwing it up and catching it, and thus keeping it in motion for a length of time without letting it fall to the ground. Prizes are given, and they often play high. The ball is often very neat and curiously covered with dyed porcupine quills.”5 (Emphasis added; it’s noted that this kicking game was often played while high correlates somewhat with modern footbag culture, as well.)
Marian Taylor reported early in the 20th century on a game of the Paiute Indians who lived near Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Wut-si-mo was played at that time with a buckskin-covered ball three inches in diameter, “used in a football game by men, say, four on a side. The object is to kick the ball between two goals, tu-bi, made of willow sticks, and some 8 or 10 feet high. The goals are about 50 yards apart, the players starting in the center. They wear only a loin cloth.”6
The Winnebago Tribe of Wisconsin also saw girls primarily taking part in such games of “foot-ball”: “They take a light soft ball, such as a stuffed stocking foot, place it on the toe, and standing on one foot, kick it up a few inches. Then as it falls they kick it back again, so as to send it up as often as possible without letting it fall to the ground, keeping count of the number of times. When it falls to the ground or when the foot is placed on the ground the ball is passed to another player. The first to count 100, or any number agreed upon, wins.”7
Fast forward to the late 20th century. Chip Johnson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, called footbag the “perfect fad” for the 1990s: “It’s not high-tech and it doesn’t cost much money.”8 His article was published just as the 12th World Championships were wrapping up in Golden, Colorado, an event organized by the World Footbag Association founders Bruce Guettich and Greg Cortopassi.
Johnson had been hanging out in August of 1991 with several footbag pioneers shredding at Denver’s Washington Park and was so taken with the sport and the culture that he convinced the editors of what’s normally a financial publication that this was a new sport worth covering. His Journal article highlighted the skills of Ken Shults, then considered the sport’s leading player, but it also mentioned some of the sport’s key figures at the time: Scott “Mag” Hughes, Scott Milne, Kendall KIC, Ted Martin, Allan Petersen, Randy Mulder, and Rick Reese. Writing about the origins of the sport, Johnson briefly mentioned an AWOL soldier and a Native American kicking bean-filled bags in a military prison but gave few details regarding the birth of this uniquely American version of footbag.
The soldier mentioned in Johnson’s article was actually a young man named Mike Marshall. In 1972, Marshall became acquainted with John Stalberger at an outdoor festival in Oregon.9 Stalberger was vacationing there from Texas, nursing a knee that was recovering from a football injury. The two formed a tight friendship and Mike suggested the sack-kicking sport he’d learned as something John could do to rehab his knee. They’d often head outside to “hack the sack” and before they knew it, a brand name was born.
The story of footbag as it exists today really starts with Mike Marshall and John Stalberger. The two spent three years kicking together and developing their own skills sets. According to the Footbag Hall of Fame website, “[T]he two entrepreneurs began experimenting with numerous designs and materials in search of the perfect footbag with the goal of manufacturing improved models that made controlling the footbag easier. Their efforts yielded the original two-panel dog bone model with complete internal stitching and a U.S. patent was issued. This first spherical footbag was designed to flatten out on impact with the kicking surface, making the footbag less bouncy and easier to control during play.”10 Their combined efforts culminated in 1974 with the manufacturing of the Hacky Sack® brand of footbags.
In 1975, however, Mike Marshall suffered a tragically unexpected heart attack. He passed away at the young age of 28 and John was left to take their plans forward in an effort to honor his friend. But John wasn’t alone. During those early years, the sport had attracted enthusiastic early adopters like Ted Huff, Garwin Bruce, Garry Gamon, Scott “Mag” Hughes, Keith Lunde, Eddie Robertson, Bill Hayne, Walt Mason, Craig Hufford, Mark and Dave Hill, Jack Schoolcraft, Jerry Cunningham, Jane Wievesiek-Sellman, Bill Fischetti, and Robert and Lori Jean Conover. A small movement was growing.
“While at lunch one day,” wrote Ted Huff upon his 1997 induction into the Footbag Hall of Fame, “I was sitting across the table from John. I thought… what if I was sitting with Dr. Naismith, (he invented basketball) and he asked me what I thought about helping start a new game. Would I be interested? I decided that exact moment that a chance to be a part of starting a new game and sport is a very rare opportunity, despite not knowing if that dream could come true. I thought that a simplistic idea, such as kicking a beanbag, could have a chance, as I had witnessed people getting ‘addicted’ in my local area already. I decided I had some skills to bring to the ‘game’ of marketing this new game/sport, and had the passion to stick with it. I decided I was in.”11
Garwin Bruce, who would eventually be dubbed “Commander Back Kick,” was first introduced to Stalberger playing softball. “They said his name was Johnny Hackysack (I actually thought that was his name for a couple of weeks).”12
Ultimately, Stalberger’s vision of footbag was as more than just an amusement. He saw potential benefit in using the bag to improve coordination and fitness balance.
Marshall had first introduced kicking as a form of rehabilitation for Stalberger’s injured knee, and the moves required to keep the bag in the air were helping to improve his dexterity and range of motion. According to the World Footbag website, “[Stalberger] found that by stressing the equal use of both sides of the body to control the footbag, and by restricting the touching of the footbag to only the feet and knees, the game could be used as an athletic or physical education training tool.”13 It was precisely this feature of the sport that drew many of its early adherents. “The principle of using both sides of the body,” wrote Garwin Bruce, “better coordination, quickness of the feet, developing flexibility and strength in the ankles and knees connected to all the sports that I had played.”14
Marianne R. Torbert, a professor of physical education at Temple University, And it is all part of a broader and growing phenomenon, manifested in widespread efforts to develop unusual skills, according to Marianne R. Torbert, a professor of physical education at Temple. “We see it in hang gliding and sky diving,” said Professor Torbert, a specialist in the psychology of human movement. “We even see a lot more people learning to juggle. They may never be the best, but they are pitting themselves against their own limits. It helps people feel better about themselves, and the good feeling flows over into the rest of life.”15
John Stalberger and Ted Huff formed the National Hacky Sack® Association (NHSA) in 1975??, an organization that would exist through 1984. The NHSA established official rules for the sport16 and organized school tours, training camps, and the first official tournaments.17 These efforts would bring the sport of footbag national attention.
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NOTES
1. ”Ancient Chinese Football” China Travel Depot http://www.chinatraveldepot.com/C253-Ancient-Chinese-Football-(cuju)
2. ”What is Chinlone?” Myanmar Insider (April 5, 2014) www.myanmarinsider.com/what-is-chinlone/
3. ”Jokgu” InfoGalactic Planetary Knowledge Core https://infogalactic.com/info/Jokgu
4. Culin, Stewart. Games of the North American Indians (1907), p. 707.
5. Maximilian, Prince of Wied. Travels in the Interior of North America (London: 1843), p. 358.
6. Culin, p. 704.
7. Meeker, Louis. quoted in Culin, p. 708.
8. Johnson, Chip. “In the Championships of Footbag, Kenny Shults Seems a Shoo-In” The Wall Street Journal, Western Edition (August 19, 1991)
9. Footbag Hall of Fame (HOF) website footbaghalloffame.net/footbag-history/
10. ibid
11. Huff, Footbag HOF
12. Bruce, Footbag HOF
13. ”Footbag History” World Footbag website http://worldfootbag.com/about-footbag/
14. Bruce, Footbag HOF
15. Robbins, William. “Floppy Little ‘Footbag’ is Big Game on Campus” New York Times (Feb. 12, 1984) Section 1, pg. 28.
16. Bad Fads Museum website http://www.badfads.com/hacky-sack/
17. “Footbag History” World Footbag website