The 2023 U.S. Open footbag championships open in Erie Saturday. What will they entail?

Many have played the game before, even if unknowingly.

Footbag, also known as hacky sack, has been played professionally for nearly three decades. This weekend, its national championship tournament comes to Erie.

Roughly 50 players will compete at the 2023 U.S. Open footbag championships at Perry Square on Saturday and Sunday. This marks the first time the competition will be held in Erie, a destination that tournament co-director Anthony Ritz called “the mecca” for footbag in the northeastern U.S.

What is footbag?

Footbag is the generic term for hacky sack, a game invented in Oregon in 1972. The latter term was trademarked and has since been widely used to refer to the racquetball-sized bean bags which players try to keep in the air without using their hands.

Two main versions of the sport are popular today – net and freestyle.

Footbag net requires players to volley the bag over a five-foot net on a badminton court, in the style of tennis or volleyball. Footbag freestyle, however, has players perform tricks for a panel of judges, the goal being to accumulate points for each trick.

How did the tournament end up in Erie?

Erie is an optimal footbag market, Ritz said, because of its central location between several of North America’s largest footbag communities. New York, Montreal, Chicago, Washington, Chicago and West Virginia are all major markets, each of which lie within an eight-hour drive.

While hosting the Lake Erie Footbag Tournament from 2015-19 with players from the U.S., Canada and Europe, organizers recognized Erie’s appeal.

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“We’re smack dab in the center of all these major footbag communities,” said Ritz, who, alongside Daniel Greer, will co-direct the tournament for the first time. “This side of the United States is more populated with footbag players than the rest, and it just made sense to have it here.”

The U.S. Open, held annually for more than 20 years, is typically awarded to a community with a large footbag population. This year’s installment will be smaller than previous, Ritz said, because it comes a week before the world championships in Colombia, which were moved from Poland in August because of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

What can fans expect?

Play begins at 10 a.m. Saturday and concludes with finals at 11 a.m. Sunday. A full tournament schedule can be found at footbag.org.

Intermediate and women’s divisions will accompany open divisions in net and freestyle, but Reitz said the majority of players will compete in open freestyle. Play is governed by the International Footbag Players Association (IFPA), a non-profit founded in 1994 that maintains scores, records and world placements.

Scot Hanson will be the tournament’s net director and Josh Gayhart will direct the freestyle. In freestyle, athletes will compete for three judges, who will award scores generally between one and nine points per trick.

“It’s something that people have never seen before, really,” said Gayhart, who hails from Butler and has been playing footbag freestyle since 2002.  "What’s hard for us to get across to some people who aren’t familiar with the sport is, these people are doing things that very few other people in the world can do. The spectators just don’t understand how hard it is, the stuff these people are doing.”

Gayhart placed third in the Open Sick 3 Division at the 2020 footbag world championships. The location of this year’s U.S. Open, he said, is a welcomed diversion from the long trips he usually makes for competitive footbag.

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Two divisions of freestyle will be exhibited — circle competition and routines. In circle kick, players do just what the name suggests, playing cooperatively while stringing together as many point-earning tricks as they can. In routines, players choreograph tricks to a 90-second music program.

“All the people in (footbag) are really great people and I like that it’s a small, tight-knit community,” Gayhart said. “Everybody knows each other, and everyone gets along with each other. I also like the cardio because it’s a hell of a workout. Very vigorous.”

Tournament organizers hope to bring the U.S. Open back to Erie in the future.

Contact Jeff Uveino at juveino@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter@realjuveino.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie to host 2023 national footbag tournament June 10-11