James “J.R.” Roberts

Photo by Thomas Hackett

Except for maybe curling, could any sport be more ridiculous?

You’re hopping up and down, contorting your body in all kinds of yogic positions, kicking a little beanbag in the air. Sure, the moves you can pull off – the toe delays, the spinning butterflies, the alpine whirligigs – are truly amazing, and only a few dozen people in the history of the human race can do them. Still, what’s the point?

Point? Whoa, dude. Who said anything about there being a point? It’s just Hacky Sack, man.

Actually, it’s not Hacky Sack. The sport is called footbag these days, and if some folks take it pretty seriously, competing all over the world, they still have a hard time explaining why.

“I’ve tried rationalizing it to my girlfriend,” says Ben Benulis, who organized the Texas Statewide Tournament in Downtown Austin a couple of weeks ago, “but I can’t.”

“It’s in my soul,” says Heather Squires Thomas, of Houston, getting appropriately mystical. “It’s what makes me happy.”

Okay, fine. But precisely why do such patently pointless pursuits make us happy? That’s what I’d like to find out.

“The fun of playing resists all analysis, all logical interpretation,” writes Johan Huizinga, the great theorist on the subject (of play, not footbag per se), so I guess we can’t fault Benulis and Squires Thomas for coming up short of a philosophically satisfying answer. For Huizinga, the pleasures of play are of a piece with the pleasures of art. “It is invested with the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony.”

Which is kind of what Jonathan Schneider says: “We are all rhythmic creatures. Doing things like this, keeping the rhythm going, is how we stay in sync with ourselves.”

With ourselves and with others, adds James “J.R.” Roberts of Plano. Roberts has been footbagging for a quarter-century now, since his freshman year of college. In 1999, he won the world championship in the all-around competition. Last year, he was inducted into the Footbag Hall of Fame (and yes, he knows how silly that sounds but is honored all the same).

“I kick a lot at church,” he tells me. “I do it for my ministry. It’s an opportunity to connect with people and tell ‘em about Jesus and give God the glory. I just got back from visiting a women’s maximum-security prison up in Fort Worth and had a blast just shredding it up with these ladies. It’s such a silly sport, but you know what? God uses simple things. The Hacky Sack philosophy is acceptance. That’s what it comes down to. So the cool thing is, I can play with a woman who’s in prison for murder, who has never played before, who is terrible, and have as much fun as I would playing with the best dude in the world. For me, that’s what this is all about.”

See, I knew there was a point.

Please write Mr. Hackett at playingthrough@austinchronicle.com.