The fifth period bell signals the start of a variety of different activities for students.  For some, it marks the beginning of socializing at lunch. For others, it serves as the opening whistle for football, basketball and soccer games.  But for five juniors, the bell means it’s time to circle up and play hacky sack.

Juniors Ben Golan, Jonathan Harwood, Jonny Schear, Jeff Gruen and Peter Beiser play hacky sack every lunch period in the patches of grass in front of the school.

The group started last year when Golan brought in one of his hacky sacks and invited his friends to play.  Since then, they have played hacky sack at lunch every day.

“One day I decided to bring in my hacky sack and it drew a lot of attention from my friends,” Golan says.

After months and months of playing the sport, the five students came up with a name for their group: the Hacky Sack Kids, or HSK.

Hacky sack is not a common pastime, but it has started to catch on throughout the United States.  HSK hopes that the group can raise awareness of its increasing popularity.

“We know it’s not so popular around here,” Gruen says.  “If we bring up the number of people who play, everyone can thank us.”

Harwood says he enjoys hacky sack because of its positive atmosphere and social value.

“It’s fun, it’s a group activity and it brings a good vibe to the group and to our surroundings,” he says.

The group’s passion for the sport led Harwood and Golan to make HSK shirts and sweatshirts to support their cause.

“Right now, our logo is an anchor,” Golan says.  “We needed something that would represent us as a strong, memorable group.”

Though hacky sack looks hard to the average spectator, the premise of the game is simple.  The point is to keep the sack up by passing to other participants and kicking it with only their feet and thighs.  Beiser finds the sport quite challenging.

“It takes us a while to get to the point where we could regularly get hacks (the term used when kicking the hacky sack),” he says.  “It’s pretty tough and can get frustrating at times, but with a lot of practice, anyone can have a whole lot of fun.”

Though HSK is open to everyone, joining the crew is not as easy as one might think.  The selection process for the club involves rather frightening tasks.

“Anyone can join, but it will take a while to get initiated,” Schear says.  “To get initiated, you have to hack on the coldest day of the year without a jacket or sweatshirt for an entire lunch period.  We call it the man hack.”

While this practice may seem intense, Beiser says it is to weed out people without dedication to the group.  However, he adds, students can still hack without officially joining the crew.

“I don’t want us to seem like we’re a bunch of jerks who only include people who last initiation,” he adds.  “I want many people to hack with us and I want people to know that we include everyone.”

If there are any students who are interested in hacky sack, who want to play or who want to join HSK, they can head out to the garden area next the football stadium and check out the new trend.

“If you like to get hyphy and play hacky sack,” Golan says, “you know what you want to do every fifth period lunch.”