Learning the Ropes

When I was in sixth grade, my gym teacher, Mrs. McMahon, was fond of asking us to jump rope inside the gymnasium on rainy days. Maybe she lacked imagination, or maybe she liked to listen to loud ‘70s rock music – she’d blare songs like “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, and for the longest time, I thought they were singing jumping rope. “Well you’re talkin’ bout jumpin’ rope. Jumpin’ rope! Oh, oh, jumpin’ rope.”

But though we were made to jump in place to rock ’n roll rhythms in gym class, we chose to jump rope during recess. The difference was that, out there, we jumped to the rhythm of two ropes hitting the blacktop in perfect time. We weren’t nearly as skilled at double dutch as the girls jumping on the streets of Philadelphia forty miles to the south, but some of us could perform footwork fancy enough to stop the boys from their kickball game and to come watch us.

It was a workout for the rope turners as well as the jumpers, and you had to time your entrance and the liftoff of your feet exactly to the twirling ropes – it required skill and concentration far beyond the mindless jumping of Mrs. McMahon’s gym class. And to us, it was every bit as much a competitive sport as kickball, only a lot more fun.

Our school district didn’t recognize this, but the New York City schools have. Double dutch will become the newest of 35 varsity sports played in New York City schools starting next spring. The hope is to get more girls involved in sports, particularly from neighborhoods where double dutch has long been practiced on sidewalks and in playgrounds outside low-income apartment buildings.

The announcement comes a week after the death of David A. Walker, a former New York City police sergeant who developed rules so that double dutch could be played competitively by girls as an intramural sport in the city schools. He also founded the National Double Dutch League.

In 1974, the first double-dutch tournament drew nearly 600 children, according to a New York Times article. Today, the Apollo Theater in Harlem hosts competitions that draw teams from around the world.

Who knows, maybe the two rope sport can someday become part of the five rings.