If you’ve ever roamed the commons of Lake Forest High School within the past couple of years, there’s a good chance you’ve seen some students spending their free time kicking a tightly knit sack of beads into the air. This phenomenon is a game that students call “hacky sack,” and it has risen in popularity over the years. 

CLICK HERE FOR HOW TO HACKY SACK VIDEO!

The goal of the game is to not let the sack of beads touch the ground, and you can do this in any way that doesn’t involve using your hands. The easiest way to do this is by kicking the sack of beads up into the air with your feet, but very advanced hacky sack players have learned to use other parts of their bodies such as their shoulders or heads. Students enjoy trying to count how many hits they can keep the hacky sack in the air for.

“I actually love [hacky sack] because it’s a fun activity that kids are doing together, and they’re not on their phones,” Assistant Principal Mr. Frank Lesniak said. “When I’m supervising the cafeteria, I see kids sitting at tables and instead of talking to each other, a lot of them are just playing a game on their phone. So I love the idea of doing all those things that are getting them away from their technology to just be a kid and have fun.”

This trend originated when the LFHS athletic trainers bought hacky sacks for rehabilitation purposes. Students saw kids using them in the trainer’s room, and began asking permission to bring the hacky sacks to the lower commons for their own enjoyment. 

“Originally, I brought the hacky sacks in for students coming back from ankle sprains that needed a high level exercise,” LFHS Trainer Mr. Bart Castillo said. “And then [hacky sack] blew up faster than you could ever imagine.” 

Although this simple game has surged in popularity over the years, there was a setback last year. Faculty members restricted students from playing in the lower commons area and would ask them to play outside instead. Most students didn’t want to leave the building to play a quick game of hacky sack, so these restrictions ended up dwindling the number of hacky sack participants last year. 

The faculty members did have a good reason behind this restriction. The year prior to last year on one of the last days of school, there was an incident involving a hacky sacker and a light fixture. The hacky sack was kicked up into the air and landed on top of one of the lights that juts out from the edge of the basement ceiling. 

A past LFHS student attempted to jump up and grab the hacky sack off of the light fixture. When doing so, they accidentally yanked the light fixture down with them and had taken it out of the wall, breaking the light. This is one of the major reasons that for the following year hacky sack was to be played outside. 

“I don’t want to take it away,” Mr. Lesniak said. “We want to be able to support it and make it enjoyable, but kids always have to respect the space that they’re in.”

Despite last year’s decline in hacky sack play, the sack is back this year! The restrictions have now loosened up, and hacky sack is now allowed in the lower commons again. 

This has led to an uproar in hacky sack participants this fall by students of all ages. Now if you walk through the commons at any time during the school day, you most definitely will see two or more games of hacky sack taking place with a multitude of players from all grades.

“It lets me wind down during the day and spend valuable time with my friends who I don’t always get to see much during school,” sophomore hacky sacker Charlie Hornberger said.

So far this fall, it looks like the future of hacky sack is bright again!