Jump On In
~posted 06.26.2007

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Jump rope is more than just a kid’s game. At its highest levels, it requires the same athleticism, dedication and discipline as other sports. And eight current or incoming NC State students are among the world’s best.

Fall 2006, New York, N.Y., backstage at a Marc by Marc Jacobs fashion show, model Joe Edney chats with a stylist.

“You really jump rope?” the stylist asks.

Edney could give the quick and easy answer: He does jump rope. He’s an assistant coach with the Chapel Hill-based Bouncing Bulldogs International Rope Skipping Team. He’s captain of the USA Jump Rope All Star team, the sport’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters. And he’s one of eight current or incoming NC State students who have won, among them, more than 60 national and world jump-rope titles.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he does what he’s done dozens of times before when the question’s been asked. He goes to his gym bag and pulls out a rope. The stylist spreads the word. About 200 designers, models, assistants and stylists form a circle around Edney. They watch during the next 45 seconds as he does pushups, handstands and some 20 or so other acrobatic and break-dance moves, all while turning a rope at blurring speed to punctuate his stunts. The audience cheers and yells. When he’s done, they applaud. Some say, “That was awesome!” Others ask, “How’d you do that?”

It’s these moments Edney has come to live for. “Whenever you tell someone you jump rope, they look at you funny. They seem skeptical, because they don’t know much about it,” says the junior in business management. “But that’s what’s fun—introducing people to the sport. . . . Maybe someone someday will be wowed by a performance I’ve done. Maybe they’ll realize that jump rope is a not just a sport. . . but a way of life.”

Jump rope? Isn’t that what little girls do while singing “Miss Mary Mack”? Isn’t that what boxers do while training for a fight? Isn’t that what elementary kids do for a Kangaroo Club award? Isn’t that jump rope?

Not to the nearly 200 athletes on the Bouncing Bulldogs, Impact Tri-Force, SkipSations and Super Skippers—the four Triangle teams that are members of USA Jump Rope, the sport’s governing body in the U.S. And not if you consider that many of them practice at least three hours a day, seven days a week, for regional, national and world championships. Think of the latter as jump rope’s biennial Olympics and the Triangle as one of the premier training grounds for Team USA.

Need proof? At the last world championship in 2006, 36 of Team USA’s nearly 150 jumpers came from the Triangle. Helping that team win the overall silver medal (behind Belgium) were seven current or incoming NC State students. Edney, senior Ted Lehman, sophomore Anna Holdaway, and incoming freshmen Suzanne Cash and Timothy Martin took home at least one gold medal each. Senior Tyler Perez won a silver medal, and sophomore Kristen Bailey, a bronze.

There’s more. The Bouncing Bulldogs have won the past three team national titles. And Edney, Holdaway and Martin are among the 24 members of the 2007–09 USA Jump Rope All Star team, which travels the nation as the sport’s top ambassadors. Lehman and Perez were on the 2005–07 team. These students, says USA Jump Rope’s operations manager John Fletcher, “are among the sport’s biggest stars.”

So why have you never heard of them? Because they participate in a young, niche sport. Though jump rope dates back to ancient Egypt, it was regarded as child’s play until the mid-1970s, when physical education teachers across the nation formed demonstration teams to promote jump rope as a cardiovascular exercise. Enough teams formed over time that coaches sought ways to bring them together, leading to the creation of USA Jump Rope and its first national championship in 1996. Still, today USA Jump Rope comprises no more than 3,100 athletes on 160 teams nationwide. Compare that with the more than 20,000 affiliated with the Raleigh-based Capital Area Soccer League’s 800 teams. (The National Double Dutch League, which sponsors double Dutch competitions separate of USA Jump Rope, has about 100,000 participants.)

But jump rope could be on the cusp of exploding from obscurity and becoming an Olympic sport.

It’s late March at the regional championship at East Chapel Hill High School. The four Triangle teams are here, as are the Spring Hope Screaming Eagles and the Columbia, S.C.-based Double Dutch Forces. The top four finishers in each of the competition’s 11 events qualify for the national championship, held at Walt Disney World, in late June.

The gym is divided into 12 squares for the 60-second speed event. In one square stands SkipSations’ Suzanne Cash, the event’s silver medalist at the 2006 national championship. An emcee announces the names of Cash and 11 other girls set to compete. A recorded voice instructs: “Jumpers ready!” Holding a fishing-line-thin wire rope and wearing running shoes, Cash settles into her starting position, with both knees slightly bent, one foot just in front of the other, and arms to her side. “Judges ready!” Three judges near Cash clasp counters in their hands.

“ Set! Go!” Cash lifts one foot just high enough to clear the floor and touches it down as the other foot lifts. She looks as if she’s running in place on the balls of her feet, alternating each step and barely jumping off the ground. She turns her wrists in small tight circles, whipping the rope around so fast it can’t be seen. The whirs of the girls’ ropes sound like the draft from a jetliner.
“ Time!” Cash works to a stop, completing 330 touches. Her arms ache, her legs ache, she breathes hard. “I love it,” she says. “There’s no better feeling than going fast and achieving a personal [best].”

Ask the athletes how they found jump rope, and they’ll tell a similar story. They saw a demonstration team perform in elementary school, and something struck them: It was different. “It gives you a sense of individuality,” says Anna Holdaway, a sophomore in Spanish and textile and apparel management and five-time national and world champion with the Bouncing Bulldogs.

The sport tests jumpers in freestyle, power and speed, as individuals, pairs and groups. The events range from the three-minute speed drill and double Dutch speed relay to the single rope pairs freestyle and four-minute team show. About 75 percent of the competitors are girls, and about 90 percent are younger than 18. Six-year-olds compete alongside 20-year-olds, and girls and boys compete side-by-side and head-to-head.

Other things to know: It’s a sport that requires equipment no more expensive than a $4 rope. Jumpers own four types, each made of different material. They use lighter wire rope for speed events; clothesline-like plastic rope for freestyle, when athletes have 45 to 75 seconds to perform a choreographed routine; easier-to-see beaded rope for demonstrations; and heavier, easier-to-control cloth rope for double Dutch, which requires two turners, two ropes and at least one jumper.

The sport seems dangerous. The athletes can turn ropes at more than 100 mph. They can turn ropes while doing one-handed handstands during double Dutch, and they can toss ropes 20 feet into the air, leap over a standing teammate and catch the rope in midair before landing. But injuries are rare, and the most common ailment is shin splints.

And here’s what makes jump rope really different: Because it’s an evolving sport, these athletes help shape it. There are no historical lines that trace back to a Babe Ruth or Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and the athletes create their own routines, invent their own tricks and teach one another. “The trademark of jump rope,” says Bouncing Bulldogs coach Ray Fredrick, “is peer teaching.” Older kids pass along what they know to the younger ones; and teaching workshops, often led by athletes themselves, follow competitions. This sharing of knowledge creates an environment where competitors are also friends, says Tyler Perez, a senior in criminology and Impact Tri-Force’s coach. “Most sports are built on cutthroat competition, and it’s all about winning and losing,” he says. “Sure, it’s nice to win. But it’s more important we do our best and keep the sport growing.”

They do that by performing demonstrations at elementary schools, sporting events and parades, and teaching instructional classes and summer camps. “I’m willing to bet that on any given. . . day there’s a team out there doing something in the community,” Perez says.

In March, at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, Timothy Martin stands on a stage with rock band OK Go before a crowd of several thousand. A 37-time world and national champion, Martin was called the “ Michael Jordan of jump rope” as early as age 10. He’s one of a handful of people who jumps high enough to turn a rope over his head and under his feet six times on a single bounce. That’s why the incoming NC State student is at the concert to promote Doubletime, a documentary that follows the Bouncing Bulldogs and another team for a year and a half. The band starts playing “ Here It Goes Again,” and Martin starts freestyling. Over the next 45 seconds, he jumps and turns the rope with his hands crossed in front of him, behind his back or between his legs as he splits his legs, tucks them under him or moves them into some contorted position like he’s riding a bicycle or jumping hurdles. He pieces together about 25 tricks, continuously moving his arms and hands like a martial artist manipulating a nunchaku while bouncing powerfully, gracefully and smoothly, as if on a trampoline. The crowd cheers throughout but becomes louder after Martin completes each stunt. For one of his final tricks, he jumps at least four feet high, tucks his legs under him and does a 360-degree turn. “ It doesn’t matter how good you are,” he says. “There’s always someone who came before you and always someone who will come after that you need to teach.”

Being a jump rope champion takes lots of practice. “It’s 99 percent preparation,” Edney says, “and 1 percent performance.”

Training includes three-mile jogs, gymnastics instruction and running steps. There’s also turning two cloth ropes with a partner for three minutes to build forearm strength; the pyramid—jumping as fast as they can in 15-second increments, working their way up to a minute and then back down to 15 seconds—to build speed; and the boot camp—jumping alone in front of teammates—to build toughness. And because they have to remember up to 10 minutes worth of routines for freestyle and team events, they rehearse their routines “until [their] muscles memorize every move,” says Holdaway of the Bouncing Bulldogs.

When competitions roll around, they know their routines’ content well enough that, when they’re performing, they’re thinking about their presentation and not their next trick. “Are you smiling?” explains the Bouncing Bulldogs’ Kristen Bailey, a sophomore in parks, recreation and tourism and five-time world and national champion. “Having fun? Interacting well with your partner? Fighting through mistakes? Giving the judges something new?”

Originality probably matters most. Judges evaluate freestyle events with a 10-point scale on three criteria: presentation, content and basic requirements, such as completing a routine in the allotted time. The tricks, choreography and level of difficulty make up content and 60 percent of the score. “You’re looking for people who go beyond the stepping stones and who push their limits,” says Lauren Perdue, a sophomore in engineering and judge who competed with the Boulder, Colo.-based Skip-It team for about eight years before enrolling at NC State and joining the Bouncing Bulldogs this year. “You’ve got to do something that makes you stand out.”

This means piecing together older tricks—some several hundred of them—in a way that has never been done before—and creating new tricks. Perdue says each year she counts a dozen she’s never seen before. Most come about through trial and error, collaborating with teammates and competitors, or by taking an existing trick, adding some twist to it and making it their own. “Create your own magic,” Edney says.

To create magic, jumpers function a lot “like Olympic athletes,” says Ted Lehman, a senior in mechanical engineering and seven-time world and national champion with the Bouncing Bulldogs. “We live our sport.”

Beyond practice, what does that mean? Nose around their closets: Nearly all their clothes bear their team’s logo. Eavesdrop on their conversations: They talk about tricks called turntables, subways and kips. Listen to their sacrifices: They give up roles in school plays, forgo other sports and spend holidays away from home. Hear their words: “Jump rope,” Holdaway says, “is always on your mind.”

July 2006, at the world championships in Toronto, Canada, the USA Jump Rope All Star team holds an exhibition before a crowd of competitors. All stars Edney and Lehman perform as part of a four-person double Dutch team. Two turners, with their legs shoulder-width apart, start the routine turning two ropes, moving their right arm clockwise and their left arm counterclockwise in big circles. Once the turners establish a beat, Edney and Lehman jump in. In a pushup position, they hop on their tiptoes and hands, and looking as if they could be on a hip-hop club’s dance floor, wiggle like worms over or under one another. At the same time, the turners’ legs shift as if they’re riding a surfboard while their arms maneuver the ropes around Edney and Lehman. “ Turning,” Edney says, “is just as important as what’s going on between the ropes.”

Minutes later, in a seven-person double Dutch routine, Edney and Lehman are the turners as five jumpers, including Martin, perform tricks that resemble cheerleading stunts. In one, the jumpers begin with their knees and hands on the ground. As a rope makes its way underneath them, two jumpers propel themselves onto the backs of the three other jumpers to form a pyramid. They end the routine in a three-person pyramid as Martin and the fifth jumper simultaneously hop, wiggle and squeeze their way between the legs of the two jumpers forming the pyramid’s base. This trick is called Grand Central Station, which “may just be the hardest double Dutch trick ever invented,” says Chris Holmes, a judge in Houston, Texas, who won a world title in double Dutch in the late 1990s and operates www.jumpropevideos.com.

“ I’ve been around jump rope since 1985, and I’ve seen a lot of tricks. I’ve even invented some of them,” he says. “These kids today are doing things that even make my jaw drop.”

Why do these students keep coming back to jump rope? It’s the question Fredrick, the Bouncing Bulldogs’ coach, asks when a jumper graduates high school and continues with the sport. Most don’t stick with it through high school. “With a car, friends, school and other sports,” he says, “most kids decide there’s no time for jump rope.”

It can’t be their love for competition, he says. They compete in, at the most, three or four tournaments a year—a total of no more than five days each year.

So why bother? “Because jump rope,” Holdaway says, “has given us more than we can give it.” Because it’s based on peer teaching, they’ve learned to communicate and lead. Because it’s a team sport, they’ve learned to work with others. Because it requires originality, they’ve developed creativity. And, they’ve had plenty of opportunities.

A sampling: This past April the SkipSations’ Cash traveled to Turkey with five teammates for a week to perform for government officials; others have been to South Africa, Israel and Brazil—up to 12 countries and 40 states. Impact Tri-Force’s Perez also was part of a rival team featured in Disney Channel’s Jump In!, a movie about a boxer turned jumper that premiered in January. And Edney and Lehman appeared in a commercial for the Xbox 360 video game console. That commercial led Edney to sign a contact with the Ford Modeling Agency and appear in ads in magazines like GQ and walk the runways for designers like Prada.

But it’s about more, Fredrick concludes. “Jump rope provides a place where you can come back, relax and be around people who care for you,” he says. “We all want a place like that.”

When a jumper suffers a concussion after missing a trick, athletes send hundreds of balloons and cards. When a teammate goes through a difficult patch, they make 30-minute drives late at night to comfort their friend. When they arrive at the national championship, they spend the first two hours doling out hugs because they know two-thirds of the 850 athletes there.

“Jump rope,” the Bouncing Bulldogs’ Bailey says, “is a family.”

In 2005, 20 members of the Bouncing Bulldogs, including Bailey, travel to the British Virgin Islands for a weeklong workshop. At the end of the week, they hold a 45-minute demonstration. They set up a stage in the middle of a baseball field, and hundreds of adults and kids pack the bleachers. More line the fence, and even more sit on the roofs of nearby houses.

The Bouncing Bulldogs showcase elements of a team show, which, in competition, involves between six and 30 members who perform a routine choreographed to music. In the traveler, several of them line up side-by-side and, without their ropes, jump in unison as one person, jumping with a rope, travels down the line and whips the rope around both himself and one jumper in line. He adds two jumpers under his rope, then three, four and five. Next, the Chinese wheel, as two people, each with a rope, stand side-by-side and grab one handle of the rope in their partner’s hand and exchange. They jump at alternating beats, turning the ropes in a swimming motion.

After the show ends, many in the crowd linger, asking the Bulldogs for autographs. A handful follows Bailey and several teammates to a nearby blacktop. They sit for several hours, talking. “ That’s what makes jump rope such a beautiful sport,” Bailey says, “how just a rope can open you up to the world.”

Fifteen years ago the X Games didn’t exist, Edney says. “Then some guy does some back flip on skis, and everybody wants to do it, and it takes off.” In 1995, the multi-sport event that included action sports like snowboarding made its debut, ESPN and ABC provided live coverage, nearly 200,000 spectators showed up, and it became an annual event. “Jump rope will take off like that someday,” he says.

That someday could be soon. Disney’s Jump In! drew 8.17 million viewers the night it premiered in January, making it the most-watched telecast in the channel’s history and generating a buzz that got the sport coverage in media outlets like Time magazine. Since the premiere, the number of calls to USA Jump Rope has doubled to about 40 a day and the organization has added 21 new teams, says USA Jump Rope’s Fletcher. Enrollment in the Bouncing Bulldogs’ instructional classes has increased 30 percent, Fredrick adds.

They’re bracing for more. The Doubletime premiere at South by Southwest made what the Forth Worth/Dallas Star-Telegram called a “supersize splash.” A showing followed at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, which led to more coverage in media outlets like NBC’s Today. Discovery Films is looking for a distributor and plans to release the film to movie theaters before airing it on one of the Discovery Network’s cable channels, which include the Discovery Channel and TLC.

There’s also the Olympics. The International Rope Skipping Federation (FISAC), jump rope’s world governing body, took its first step this year toward that goal. It’s developing a universal scoring system for its member organizations, including USA Jump Rope. Once the members adopt a uniform system, FISAC can petition the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to recognize jump rope as a sport. Among the criteria considered are participation, spectator attendance and media interest. At least two-thirds of the IOC’s 111 members must then approve the sport’s addition to the games. Once recognized, it takes at least seven years before a sport makes its Olympic debut.

But where will that lead a sport that rewards originality, and what will it mean for athletes attracted to it because it’s different? Exposure is good, the athletes say, but greater participation won’t come without change. Some has happened already. For the first time this year, USA Jump Rope awarded medals in pairs freestyle and double Dutch for the older age divisions in two categories: female and mixed, which includes all-male teams. But this “isn’t as rewarding,” says SkipSations’ Cash. “You don’t work this hard to be just another great female jumper. You do it to be a great jumper.”
What other changes await? More participation could mean more qualified judges, more media coverage and more recognition of jump rope as a sport. But it also could mean the only teachers who matter are coaches, the loss of the “family” feel and the rise of cutthroat competition. Whatever growth brings, the Bouncing Bulldogs’ Perdue predicts a day when jump rope’s place in obscurity is no more. “Within a couple of generations,” she says, “jump rope will not be the same sport as it is today.”

This past February, in an office at the Bouncing Bulldogs’ practice facility in Chapel Hill, Bailey and Holdaway sit on a carpeted floor. They talk about what it means to be stepsisters and teammates. “ Sure we get sick of each other sometimes,” Holdaway says, “but we’re always there for each other.” About their first competition, when they were about 12 years old, tripping on their opening trick during a double Dutch routine. “ We thought we had the best routine ever and blew it,” Bailey says. And about why they plan to stick with jump rope as long as possible, whether as a judge, coach or competitor, like all the other incoming or current students.

“ I can’t imagine my life without it,” Bailey says.

“ Who could have known a rope — just a piece of string really — could give you so much?” Holdaway concurs.

In the gym next door, about 50 Bouncing Bulldogs practice, and the noise of plastic ropes snapping against the hardwood floor filters through the office. It sounds like the churning machines of a factory.

That, Bailey says, is the sound of happiness.

Cherry Crayton ’01, ’03 med is assistant editor of NC State magazine.