This weekend, ESPN 8: The Ocho will broadcast all manner of sports that don't normally sit front of mind for the average fan.
Roofball. Corgi races. The Microsoft Excel World Championship finals.
It's a mélange of events you likely either haven't heard of or haven't thought of since the last time they were on The Ocho. And this year's slate is more action-packed with unconventional options than ever, including a whopping 23 Ocho debutant sports. The options on that list strike a similar tenor.
Death diving. Housekeeping Games. Combat archery. You get the idea.
But what if I told you there's one sport on that list of new events that you, dear reader, very well might have played yourself? Depending on your propensity for eccentric athletic activity, such a notion might seem ridiculous.
It's not. Because hacky sack is having a moment. And it's on-air this Ocho weekend looking to capitalize.
INVENTED IN THE 1970s, hacky sack has long had a certain cultural cachet in the American schoolyard experience.
It's the unofficial sport of university quads and college house lawns around the country. Take a walk around a campus on a sunny spring or fall day and there's a decent chance you'll catch a game. The game boasts an egalitarian spirit that provides a decidedly low barrier to participation -- all you really need is sufficient space and a kicking beanbag such as the official Hacky Sack. You can practice alone, or you can play with as many people as you can fit into a reasonably condensed circle.
So a large grassroots playing base for hacky sack is nothing new. Its name-brand appeal and social media-friendly game was part of why toy and game company PlayMonster saw the potential for a revival, acquiring the rights to the Hacky Sack from Wham-O -- which had produced the activity's eponymous footbags since the 1980s -- last year.
But even PlayMonster wasn't expecting the surge that occurred a few months ago.
The source of hacky sack's rapid rerise isn't entirely clear. A widespread spate of 1980s and '90s nostalgia? The ease with which it allows new players to pick up the game? Its cross-generation connection potential? All are reasonable theories.
But regardless of cause, seemingly from out of nowhere hacky sack emerged as the sport of the spring at schools around the country. Players scrambled to put together unofficial school team accounts on Instagram. Everyone wanted in -- "Hacky Sack" peaked at No. 4 among search terms across Amazon during the week of May 11 and peaked at No. 1 on TikTok Shop for the first two weeks of May.
The shopping bonanza matched an online trend: Hacky sack content began to amass huge views on social media. Individual clips of rallies and highlights racked up millions of views on Instagram and TikTok. One online bracket pitted the clips of competing school teams against one another, with winners being decided by comment section votes. Over 5,000 people let their voice be heard in the championship matchup, which boasted a $4,000 prize pot.
"I would say," Jonathan Berkowitz, CEO of PlayMonster, told ESPN, "this has exceeded our expectations."
• Watch hacky sack -- along with slippery stairs, roofball, T-Rex racing and many other sports -- during the 10th anniversary edition of The Ocho, airing Thursday through Sunday.
Overperformance against expectations aside, it's unquestionable that hacky sack has momentum currently that it hasn't enjoyed in a while. And The Ocho will offer the game a platform that can help that momentum sustain and build even further.
Saturday's Hacky Sack 2026 Championship on ESPN (9:30 a.m. ET) might contain some rules and scoring that seem odd to fans of prototypical team sports.
Two-minute routines will be judged on difficulty (worth 50 points), creativity (30 points), variety (20 points) and drops (minus-2 points each). And while difficulty and creativity in routines have always been part of the sport, their prominence in the event's scoring reflects a notable tack the sport has undertaken in its adoption by current students: an emphasis on showcasing a flair for the spectacular.
"The '80s and '90s, when hacky sack was out there at first, it was really about keeping it in the air as long as you can and the number of times you kept it in the air," Berkowitz said. "The sport has totally evolved to be about what amazing tricks you can do. You go on TikTok, you go on Instagram, and you see all these tricks that are being done, it's unlike anything that was being done in the '80s and '90s."
Henry Zimmerman, a rising junior at Southern Regional High School in New Jersey, will be one of the players competing for the championship Saturday. His father had tried to get him and his brother to pick up the game as kids, though it never took. But this spring, he saw the sport grow in virality and moved quickly to put a team of friends together to compete in the aforementioned online bracket of New Jersey high schools.
The game he and his friends were now playing wasn't quite what his father had initially sought to teach.
"I think that back then, even talking to my dad, it was more of like a fun hobby where it wasn't really competitive, everybody was just having fun just kicking the bag up and down," Zimmerman told ESPN. "But now it's all about tricks, creativity, doing pretty cool stuff with it."
The new evolution of the sport isn't entirely without quibbles from its former practitioners -- including Mr. Zimmerman.
"He came and played with us a little bit -- he was surprised at how good we got so fast," Zimmerman the younger recalled. "But he wasn't a big fan of serving it to the chest. He said back then they would serve it to the knees and the feet and they'd have to play from there."
He's not alone in having some contentions. Reached for comment via text message, my uncle Michael -- a longtime hacky sacker who has taken some exceptions of his own with my high school aged cousin and his friends' newfound method of play -- echoed a similar sentiment.
"Kids today have no patience for fundamentals," he wrote. "They can't even do a proper jester but they have already set up brackets and packaged it for TikTok. I love to see the resurgence in popularity, but this sport is about camaraderie, not competition."
But what if hacky sack's recent turn toward highlight-heavy play is intrinsic to its resurgence?
Berkowitz theorizes that this newfound appetite for playing with panache could be a compounding factor in the sport's virality. There's an ethos of one-upmanship and originality that courses through the game's current DNA, one that's tailor-made for social media.
"That's why also the social spread is going to keep going," he said. "Because every time you make a video, or kids make a video, it's different. And it's unique. So that's definitely what we're leaning into."
REGARDLESS OF REASON or form, hacky sack has energy right now. On Saturday, it will have a national platform to continue to bolster that momentum. So where can it go from here?
If PlayMonster's actions are any indication, even with the recent spurt of newfound popularity, there still could be plenty of potential untapped for the campus-favorite game. The company has gone all-in in recent months to capitalize on that possible unrealized potential as students are returning in August.
Normally, according to Berkowitz, the product development cycle for a sporting goods product is 12 to 18 months. The cycle for some of PlayMonster's upcoming Hacky Sack products was trimmed to just two. That accelerated development timeline included an impromptu trip to China by Berkowitz and his team, with new products set to be air shipped over to the U.S. for a further expedited process.
How many new products can be developed for a game that draws a lot of benefit from a player's sole needs of space and a Hacky Sack, you might ask? A whole lot, apparently.
While a Hacky Sack is a small item in itself, you can craft it in dozens of ways to alter its performance and in-air behavior. Potential variables in that performance equation include weight, material and panel count -- and PlayMonster intends to have as many plausible angles as possible covered.
"We've got a whole line of Hacky Sacks, from two-panel Hacky Sacks up to 32-panel Hacky Sacks," Berkowitz said. "And all different weights, from plastic to metal. And then we're also introducing new light-up Hacky Sacks and new counting Hacky Sacks -- we have an electronic Hacky Sack that will actually count how many times audibly that you keep it in the air.
"We started the year with just a couple of items in the line. We're going to have 20 or so items by the end of the year."
PlayMonster's bet is that as students return to school the teams will keep forming, social media clips will keep exploding and Hacky Sacks will keep flying through the air. Whether that bet is a wise one or not remains to be seen. But what is certain is that Saturday's appearance during ESPN's most unserious block of programming will showcase the game to a world of potential new players.
"It's a perfect storm," Berkowitz said. "So we'll just continue to fuel it."
Or you can take Zimmerman's word for it.
"Come fall," he said. "Everybody has a Hacky Sack."