On the ropes

Irvington team mixes hops and skips with discipline and community

By ERIC BARTELS

The Portland Tribune, Jan 22, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

KATIE HARTLEY / TRIBUNE PHOTOS

Kenyon O’Rourke (left) and Lillia Davenport throw a ball to each other while jumping rope. Irvington PE teacher Karen Barker (holding the ropes) coaches 89 kids on the school’s jump-rope team. Below, Barker shows seventh-grader Torrey Robinson how to do a trick.

Twice a week, kids pack the gymnasium at Irvington School, jump-ropes in hand. But their instructor, Karen Barker, isn’t playing around.

“I don’t deal with the attitude,” she announced at a recent practice, although she didn’t seem to be getting much from her students.

“Bench!” she barks at one point, and kids instantly take a seat.

Skipping rope may be kids’ stuff, but in Barker’s firm hands it’s been fashioned into a important instrument at the Northeast Portland school, a tool that builds bodies, teaches responsibility and instills pride in students.

Twenty-eight years after starting a similar program at Woodlawn Elementary, Barker has 89 kids on her Irvington Jump Rope Team, not to mention the 62 others involved in a twice-weekly tumbling class before school.

Throw in the couple dozen kids who have had to give up jumping rope due to scheduling conflicts, and Barker, the K-7 school’s physical education teacher, has been head coach of more than one-third of the student body.

“She’s an amazing person,” says Cathy Percich, a fourth-grade teacher who’s been at Irvington for more than 20 years. “She doesn’t get paid to come to school at 7 in the morning twice a week (for tumbling practice).”

Members of the jump-rope team, which performs at halftime of local high school basketball games and at two gala year-end shows at Irvington, must make a formal commitment.

“They have a contract in order to be on the team,” Percich says. “It says they’re going to be in school on time, they’re following school rules, they’re getting their homework in.

“There is such leadership and responsibility and confidence that they gain from this. Here’s a place where they can be successful. There are high expectations for the team.”

And Barker, a 55-year-old grandmother of two whose idea of fun is being a competitive bodybuilder in her free time, makes sure those expectations are met.

“I’ll tell them the easy part is having the skills,” she says. “The hard part is disciplining yourself. If you’re not here to work, don’t come. I’m not here to baby-sit.”

Students hop to it

Team practices are not a low-stress affair, with spring-loaded kids and a powerful sound system generating an earsplitting din. The only supervision comes from Barker and a volunteer assistant, yet there’s very little goofing off going on.

When Barker abruptly kills the music — mostly current favorites like Fergie, Soulja Boy and Justin Timberlake — the place goes dead quiet.

“You guys are not listening,” Barker shouts, her face a stern mask.

“Many of you aren’t thinking what step is ahead of you,” she explains, her index fingers to her temples. “I want you thinking.”

“She is like that a lot of the time,” says Steve Zich, a 40-year-old Portland computer programmer who has two kids in Barker’s program. “But she’s serious in a good way. They all behave.”

At the end of the session, Barker puts the kids through a whole-squad routine that requires precision as waves of jumpers spring into action to successive musical cues. She demands that anyone who slips up — even a little — immediately sit down, dropping out of the routine.

Two surprising things happen. First, an ironclad honor system becomes evident. Even jumpers whose infractions are minor or whose mistakes might not have been spotted drop quickly to the floor.

And it takes a long time to eliminate the kids. Because they’re good.

At the end of the routine, a hearty cheer goes up from onlookers, whose ranks have swelled as parents arrive to collect their kids.

“One of the nice things about this program is that it encompasses all the grades, and all the kids are involved,” Zich says. “It ties the whole school together. It’s because of the work Karen does that kind of brings us in. It’s encouraged the community to come together and do things that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.”

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