Ready. Set. Jump!

Let’s take a trip back to the 1950s. It’s a time before texting and TikTok, before video games and Netflix. The television is a recent invention, and many families don’t own one. 

So what, you may wonder, do kids do ? 

To find the answer, step outside. Walking through the streets, you’ll pass kids thwacking a handball against a wall, shrieking joyfully in the cool spray of a fire hydrant, and shooting marbles across the pavement. And sooner or later, you’ll hear it: TICK-tat, TICK-tat, TICK-tat. 

That is the sound of two jump ropes flicking against the pavement. Two kids hold the ends of the ropes, turning them in giant circles. But it’s the girl in the middle who draws your attention. She is skipping over the twirling ropes so quickly that her feet are a blur of motion. Other kids chant rhymes to keep her on the beat: “Banana, banana, banana split. What did you get in arithmetic?” 

This jump rope game is called double Dutch. One day, it will become an international sport. But for now, it’s simply an after-school obsession.

The girl in the middle hops on one foot. She jumps faster and faster, until—“Eeeeeek !” Her foot catches on a rope, and she gets hopelessly tangled. Everyone whoops and laughs. As the jumper steps aside, all eyes turn to you. Time to decide: Do you dare jump in the ropes?

Jump rope games have been around for hundreds—maybe even thousands—of years. But it wasn’t until the 1940s that double Dutch as we know it today began to take off. The game was a favorite in New York City and other big cities, where there weren’t many open spaces for kids to play. You could squeeze in a double Dutch game almost anywhere—a narrow alleyway, a sidewalk. And you didn’t need special equipment. You could use clotheslines or old telephone wires as ropes.

Over the years, double Dutch became a tradition passed down from kid to kid on playgrounds and street corners. Adrienne “Nikki” Adams Howell, who played in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, doesn’t even remember when she started. 

“I just learned by watching other kids,” she says. 

Double Dutch was especially popular among Black girls, who transformed it from a simple game into something extraordinary—something that was part dance, part gymnastics. They recited clever rhymes to the beat of the ropes and performed dazzling tricks. Leapfrogs! Cartwheels! Flips! The best jumpers could do it all without getting caught in the swinging ropes. 

And if you did get caught? Well, that was just part of the fun.

In 1973, a New York City police detective named David Walker came across girls playing double Dutch in his neighborhood. He was dazzled by their strength, agility, and coordination. This should be a sport, he thought.

At the time, few organized sports were open to girls. Baseball, basketball, and football were mostly considered boys’ games. Walker wanted to help create an athletic competition in which girls could shine. 

Along with fellow detective Ulysses Williams, Walker established a double Dutch league and came up with official rules for scoring. Players would be judged on speed, footwork, and creativity. The two officers reached out to schools across the country, encouraging students to form teams. 

Nikki Adams Howell was in seventh grade when her school first held double Dutch tryouts, in 1977. She was chosen for a team with three other girls: Robin Oakes Watterson, Delores Brown Finlayson, and De’Shone Adams Goodson. They would soon become known as the Fantastic Four.

The girls practiced four to six hours a day, pounding the gym floor with lightning-fast steps and dreaming up acrobatic tricks. They had never met before tryouts, but they jumped well together almost right away. 

By 1980, the double Dutch league had grown to include 50,000 players. That June, the league held a championship in New York City. Some 120 jumpers competed, including the Fantastic Four. 

When it was their turn, the girls took their place onstage and launched into a jaw-dropping routine. As the ropes whipped around and around, they danced, spun, and leapfrogged over each other. One girl leaned forward while another flipped over her back. At one point, all four were—incredibly—jumping together in the ropes while turning them at the same time. It was a trick that had never been done before. 

“The audience lost their minds,” Watterson recalls.

No one was surprised when the Fantastic Four won first place.

The team’s win made them famous across America. In the following months, they appeared on TV shows and in newspapers and magazines. They starred in commercials for McDonald’s, jumping rope to the beat of a song about Big Macs and fries. They performed with popular hip-hop artists, at a time when hip-hop music and culture were just emerging. 

“We are deeply honored that the Fantastic Four is part of that history,” Goodson says. 

As a recreational activity, double Dutch isn’t as popular today as it once was. But competitive double Dutch is still going strong. It has spread beyond the U.S. too. At the Double Dutch Holiday Classic, a competition held in New York each December, teams arrive from as far away as Japan, Kenya, and Brazil. According to the National Double Dutch League, nearly 100,000 jumpers now compete in double Dutch events.

The Fantastic Four are working to make sure that number continues to grow. Now in their 50s, the former champions officiate at competitions and also mentor new jumpers. 

What’s next for double Dutch? 

Some say it should become an Olympic sport. So perhaps if you start practicing now, one day you could be jumping for gold. 

It’s a cloudless, breezy day in Santa Monica, California. As the sun shines overhead, you join a group of kids gathered around an emptied-out swimming pool. Then—whoosh!

A kid zips across the pool, his bare feet gripping a wooden board mounted on four wheels. He shoots up the sloping side of the pool and then, in one swift motion, turns and glides back down. Everyone cheers. 

The year is 1965, and the kid in the pool is showing off his skills at everyone’s new favorite pastime: skateboarding. 

Today, millions of kids and adults around the world skateboard. But 60 years ago, skateboarding was something new—something that young people were pioneering. 

No one knows exactly when the first skateboard was created. It’s believed, though, that skateboards evolved from scooters, which date back to the early 20th century. Kids often built their own: They attached roller skate wheels to the bottom of a wooden plank and mounted a wooden fruit crate on top. 

At some point, kids had the idea of breaking off the crate and riding just the board. By the late 1950s, kids in California could be seen speeding downhill on their makeshift boards, wheels rattling against the pavement. 

It wasn’t long before companies took notice of the new trend and began making and selling skateboards. These boards were particularly popular with surfers, who loved to “sidewalk surf” when waves were flat. But these early skateboards were clunky and difficult to maneuver—and it was easy to fall off.

In the early 1970s, innovations in skateboard design turned skateboarding into the daring, stunt-filled sport we know today. The new boards had a kicktail—an upward bend at the back of the board—and a new kind of wheel that gave skateboarders greater traction. These changes, as well as other improvements, vastly increased maneuverability. 

 The boards opened up a whole new world of tricks for skateboarders to work on perfecting in empty pools and paved ditches. And it wasn’t long before skate parks began to pop up around the country. These parks were built just for skateboarding—places where skaters could speed up ramps, soar into the sky, and turn in midair before dropping back down. By the 1980s, cities themselves had become a skateboarder’s playground. Stairs, handrails, ledges—all became props in the invention of new stunts. 

For many kids, skateboarding was more than a hobby or something fun to do after school. It was a way of expressing themselves. Skating was all about creativity—and freedom. 

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the best skaters weren’t just dazzling crowds at skate parks and along city streets. They also faced off in competitions and appeared in magazines and movies.

Then in 1995, a milestone occurred when TV network ESPN broadcast the X Games—a sporting event that showcased skateboarding alongside other “extreme” sports, like mountain biking and bungee jumping. The event helped turn skateboarding into a mainstream sport. Less than a decade after the first X Games, there were some 2,000 skate parks in the U.S., up from just a few hundred in 1982. And all over the world, more and more kids began picking up skateboards—in real life and also in popular video games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. 

Skateboarding has come a long way from the sidewalks and emptied-out pools of the 1960s. Today, it is an Olympic sport, having made its debut at the Tokyo Games in 2021. 

But for skaters like 13-year-old Sky Brown, who won a bronze medal in the Olympic Games that year, skateboarding is in many ways not so different than in its early years. “At the end of the day, I just want to have fun,” she says.

^{This article was originally published in the April 2022 issue.}