Jump roping team bringing extravaganza to Peninsula

Published 1:30 am Saturday, August 8, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Handstands. Push-ups. A rope let go mid-jump and caught a half-second later, all without breaking rhythm.

Somewhere underneath is the double Dutch, the criss-cross and the side-to-side skipping you remember from the playground.

But this is today’s jump rope — filled with acrobatics, speed and power.

“It’s an incredibly physical sport now. It has evolved so much over the years,” five-time freestyle world champion Rene Bibaud said.

Bibaud and 12 athletes from the Seattle Rain City Ropeworks team she coaches will be in Clallam County next week to help the North Olympic Library System close out its annual Summer Reading Program with a Jump Roping Extravaganza.

The three shows — in Forks and Port Angeles on Wednesday and in Sequim on Thursday — are free and open to all ages.

Bibaud said the Rain City team’s routines show the range of the sport. There are multiples — the double, triple and quadruple passes of the rope under the feet in a single jump, sometimes with the rope spinning around the body in the air.

There are releases: letting go of the rope and catching the handle, whipping it behind the back and through the legs.

The team also brings the audience in. After the performance, they hand out ropes and turn the floor into an open class.

“We love sharing the joy of jumping rope,” Bibaud said. “We can get pretty much anybody inside the double Dutch ropes and jumping up and down. That is always a huge, huge hit.”

Bibaud pitches the sport as portable, inexpensive and a healthy reset for a restless mind. A few minutes of jumping makes a good study break, she said — enough to get the blood flowing and sharpen focus before heading back to the books.

Learning a new combination demands total presence, she said — “you have to be 100 percent dialed into what you’re doing” — the kind of focus she thinks kids rarely get from a screen.

Bibaud said jump rope also moved passed its reputation as a “girl thing.”

“The good news is that we’ve changed that,” she said, noting that four of the performers on the trip are boys.

Jump rope builds agility, timing, coordination, foot speed and endurance, she said, the kind of conditioning that carries into nearly every other sport.

“You do not have to be an athlete,” she said. “It’s all about just being willing to show up and not give up.”

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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.