Dragonfly Footbags

So many times I pick up a footbag and kick it around thinking i’m playing some new and original sport. Well, on the American urban scene it is a pretty new sport. But I decided to do some more extensive research into the background and full history of the sport. Any footbag afficionado has heard of Mike Marshall and John Stalberger, but did you also know that Native American Indians played a version of hacky sack? I didn’t think so Read on…

Footbag is an ancient sport.

How ancient? While avid players would like to think of cave men kicking stones at each other, the truth is that this sport was first developed by Native Americans. Archaeologists and historians agree that Native Americans used dried animal hides filled with pellets in order to play a game similar to the one that we know today.

Interestingly, these ancient sack players used to tie feathers to their animal hide balls with the hopes that these balls would then fly (they didn’t). The current version of footbag is based upon this ancient Native American sport, but the modern adaptation of the game was the brain child of Mike Marshall and John Stalberger (two American athletes).

Have you ever wondered why true footbag players never refer to the bag as a “Hacky Sack?”

Well, Stalberger and Marshall decided to create a form of therapeutic play that Stalberger could use (he was recovering from knee surgery at the time), and they began to call their game “Hackin the Sack” and the little bean filled sack a “Hacky Sack.”

Eventually, the duo went on to market the hacky sack, and Stalberger ultimately sold the name “Hacky Sack” to the Wham-O Company.

Though the actual sport is called “footbag,” the name “Hacky Sack” has stuck to the bags ever since.

Wham-O currently sells 4 different types of hacky sacks. View them all at the Wham-O website.

Here is a photo of the Wham-O Striker Footbag:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.