Adrena Foy built a world-class Double Dutch team from scratch. Whatever impossible moves she dreamed up for her team, they could achieve. The sky was the limit…until the funding was cut.
Adrena Foy built a world-class Double Dutch team from scratch. Whatever impossible moves she dreamed up for her team, they could achieve. The sky was the limit…until the funding was cut.
Mrs. Foy coached alongside Juanita Etheridge, Pam Gadson, Kathy Deloach, Tina Gordan, and Mrs. Bertoma Deloach.
elizabethrivertrail.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5ZOreHLjs
heardofem.com
nps.gov/locations/chesapeakebaywatershed/grants.htm
virginiahumanities.org
(Tinkling, keyboard music under the following)
Nichole Hill: While double-dutching is long gone from Norfolk Parks and Recreation, this story remains relevant today. What opportunities still exist for collective joy? What gets funded?
What gets forgotten? And who decides what “recreation” should look like?
This isn’t just a Norfolk story. It’s an American pattern.
A two-dollar jump rope. A twelve-year program. Hundreds of girls.
Unraveled…not by failure, but by a shift in priorities.
(Echoes of children playing outside, music twinkles to an end)
Nichole Hill: Adrena Foy was a catalyst, an innovator, and an executor who knew how to bring everybody else’s dreams to life. In this case, that dream was Double Dutch.
(Sound of music, and girls jumping in, then chanting…)
Mrs. Foy: The Double Dutch came from it was Juanita Ethridge. She had a dream about Double Dutch with the City of Norfolk.
(Chanting and jumping sounds)
We didn't really sing any songs with competitive double Dutch 'cause fun. Double Dutch is not good. Double Dutch. Not when you trying to be competitive. 'Cause that skip and hop you, all you doing is picking up bad habits, so. Even now when kids get in the rope and I'm looking at them jump, I'm like, you gotta get that skip out of there. That ain't right. But we always had a rhythm.
Nichole Hill: So, if you don’t know, competitive double-dutch is the slap-snap of two ropes like a heartbeat with attitude.
In the center? A jumper. No, a dancer. An athlete.
It’s precision, choreography, speed. Teams of three: two turners, one jumper or sometimes more, in perfect sync, flipping, twisting, spinning through ropes.
(Drums keep a beat)
One wrong move, (music stops) and the rhythm breaks. One right move, (music starts again) and the crowd erupts.
(Sound of crowd cheering)
Mrs. Foy: And at that time, we wanted to do some tricks and some ropes, maybe some speed round or something like that, that set our own rules to how we gonna get this done, and invite each Rec Center to have a team.
So my journey started at Titustown Community Center, where I had a total of 10 young ladies that, we threw some ropes out there and say, look, we need to learn some tricks. We need to learn some tricks. So they, they pull out some polo sticks, some polo balls…
Had a young lady that could really flip. So we was, she was flipping all in the rope. We was catching her. We were just coming up with a little bit of everything. Turns and twists and squatting.
They had an idea of what Double Dutch was. Not the competitive part of it, like how we gonna get this polo ball in this rope, or how we gonna jump over this stick, or how we gonna do this dance and squats and that. They just was used to jumping in one foot at a time.
Jump, jump, jump. And, but they were creative enough to figure it out, so we figured that out.
(Sound of crowd cheering over sound of ropes hitting the ground)
Nichole Hill: Adrena came from the same streets as the kids she coached...The same cracked courts, the same summer leagues. She experienced firsthand that sports could be a golden ticket/opportunity.
Football had scholarships. Basketball had scouts. While double-dutch had neither, Adrena knew it had the potential to instill the same camaraderie, commitment, and confidence. The same sweat, the same grind in every jumper, turner, and coach.
Mrs. Foy: The hardest trick for my young lady that knew how to flip was something that I dreamed up. And basically that came from a pushup into a back squat into a back somersault, and she was able to do it.
(Under the following, we hear the sounds of a rope turning, girls celebrating)
First of all, I gotta teach these young ladies how to turn the rope, you know? Come on, y'all get this timing together. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Slow it up. 1, 2, 1 2, 1, 1, 2, 1 2 up. Up 1, 2, 1 2. And if you need to get your knees or something up higher, we are singing that within that rhythm. So that is just the rhythm that we use. 1, 2, 1, 2 down. Push up, one, two, out. 1, 2, 1, 2. So that was the sound in our practice all the time was that one, two beat. One, two beat.
It's that slow. You could do anything with that beat. Even flip in, flip out, flip in.
As far as the jumper herself: timing, timing up, up we actually mastered that really quick, the girls was able to pick it up. The jumper was able to time it out, and we was able to do that trick. After it was done, the hollering and the screaming, and "Ah, we did that. We did that.” The excitement came to, to the team itself.
They was just hollering all over the place.
(Sound of girls screaming and cheering)
I was feeling just like they was hollering screaming. "Oh yeah, you got that Quista, come on. Come on. Get your feet up." But yeah, we did it.
The first competition with the Titustown group, 'cause that was the first competition that we actually created ourselves.
Nichole Hill: The coaches understood the value of reaching a goal and gaining recognition. Little did they know this activity could lead to an opportunity to compete on a national stage. It gave the teams a chance to travel, show off tricks, and it was all made possible by a sponsorship from Arthur Sandler.
Mrs. Foy: That was great for the city of Norfolk, all the kids from all rec--we had 14 recreation centers. Everybody had one or two teams. All the kids came and everybody was excited about their team and how they was gonna do, looking at the tricks. 'Cause we the only one came in there with polo balls and polo sticks and sticks and jumped ropes within the rope. We came in there with everything.
All eyes was on Titustown. That competition, it was a learning experience for everybody. But it was more so an experience for the coaches to say, I want to take this to another level.
And that's when Juanita saw a competition with the American Double Dutch League and brought it to our attention, saying that this is something that she sees that we can do. So that's when we started the American Double Dutch League being a competitor in that.
(Sound of a team on a bus, chanting and claping transitions into echos of cheering in a gym)
And that last year, the last year that we jumped, I had a doubles team from Youngs that had placed second in the World Championship we was like, we got it now. Can't nobody stop us.
(Sounds from above fade out, like a gym emptying out. With no background sounds, she starts the following)
But we were stopped because that was the last year that we had double Dutch, but the city Norfolk. We had lost our sponsorship. And that's when the program came to an end.
Oh, just thinking about it because one, that was my daughter's team. Yes, and, it was like, We worked so hard to get where we were. This program went for 12 years, 13, if I'm not mistaken.
That was my daughter's team, and I felt some kinda way because, because we worked really hard.
(Sound of chanting, rope turning outside, and soft piano)
Nichole Hill: Though the ropes stopped turning, the rhythm never left.
What died in dollars and cents lived on in the muscle memory of the kids. Kids who learned how to lead, how to show up, how to jump back in.
Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends.
This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn, and our work has been supported by the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation through a National Park Service Chesapeake Gateways Grant as well as by a grant from Virginia Humanities. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Mrs. Adrena Foy!