WORLD> America
|
WORLD> America
|
|
NYC adds double dutch rope jumping as school sport
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-27 09:36 The compulsory section has several requirements. "You have to do an aerial, which is like a flip," Payne said. "You have to do a rapid dance with some fancy footwork, you have to do a rope trick and you have to do a cheer, an ending that your whole team takes part in." Double dutch will officially be coed, though the great majority of participants are girls. "Jump In!" a 2007 Disney cable movie, starred Corbin Bleu as a high schooler who defies gender stereotypes by forsaking boxing for double dutch. School sports officials hope to start with 10 to 15 double dutch teams spread among the five boroughs. Shani Newsome is excited about coaching double dutch at Bedford Academy High School in Brooklyn, where she is a teacher's aide. "Double dutch is a sport that gets girls involved no matter what their condition is," she said. "It's something that builds stamina. You start out slow." Newsome said that when she was growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, "jumping double dutch was one of the requirements of being outside." And when she asked for a show of hands at Bedford Academy, "90 percent of the young ladies" indicated that they would try out for a team. Kunnuh Wisseh, an incoming junior at Benjamin Banneker Academy, also in Brooklyn, hopes to be on her school's team. "I always looked at double dutch as a sport, and for it to actually be in PSAL, now it's going to be even more competitive than it was before," she said. Payne, who coaches Kunnuh in Brooklyn's Jammin' Jumpers double dutch team, said young people who participate in the sport learn skills that will help them succeed in life. They learn how to negotiate," she said. "They learn how to talk, they learn discipline. And they learn to work together."
|
