The Return of Hacky Sack and the Power of Human Connection

This spring at CA, I feel like I've stepped into a time machine and returned to the late 1980s and '90s. During breaks and free periods, you'll find high schoolers gathered in two or three groups outside my office, in the Sculpture Garden, and in Stamper Commons—all of them kicking around a little bean bag. It has been a genuinely wonderful sight.

The hacky sack version our students play has its own twist, called "three sack whack," where if you keep the sack airborne three times in a row, you earn the right to grab it and hurl it at someone else in the circle to knock them out. The result is a group that periodically explodes in every direction, erupting in laughter as they scatter. Pure joy.

As it turns out, CA is right in sync with a national moment. A recent New York Times piece documented how hacky sack has swept high school campuses across the country this spring—starting in New England prep schools just after Spring Break and spreading rapidly from there. One head of school called it something he'd "never seen explode as quickly." 

Retailers can't keep the bags on shelves. Students have invented mock varsity rankings and created social media accounts just to document their circles. At one middle school in Massachusetts, a principal noted that kids who usually reach for their phones the moment the bell rings are instead putting them away to play outside.

That last detail is the one that sticks with me.

Whatever has sparked this revival, what I see on our campus is students choosing to be outside, in the sun, laughing together—no screens required. That matters deeply. We know from research and experience that face-to-face interaction is essential to our mental health and well-being, and yet it's increasingly rare.

This connects to something we'll be working on together next year: a thoughtful look at how we reduce smartphone use on campus. I want to involve students in shaping that process, because this isn't about taking something away—it's about making space for more presence, more connection, more laughter.

This spring has been a simple reminder that we can have a lot of fun without our phones, and that being truly present with one another is its own reward. The hacky sack circles are, in their own small way, a blueprint for what we're after.

There is something beautifully simple about a circle of students laughing together with no agenda beyond keeping a bean bag in the air. No one is curating the moment, documenting it, or worrying about how it appears online. They're just participating in it. In a culture where so much of teenage life can feel mediated through screens, algorithms, and performance, the return of hacky sack feels almost refreshingly human.

Maybe that's why this small revival has resonated so powerfully. At its core, it isn't really about hacky sack at all. It's about connection, belonging, movement, spontaneity, and shared joy. Watching our students choose that, again and again this spring, has been a beautiful sight.