There’s a saying in the world of competitive rope skipping: Our sport is your sport’s punishment.

That’s right, whereas another athlete might pick up a rope and do some jumping in lieu of a lap or a burst of punitive pushups, those who seek to stake a claim in the sport of rope skipping just jump.

And, yes, even before you ask, the rope wranglers do consider it a sport — and odds are that you will, too, after a demo. Let’s just say this ain’t the playful playground pageantry of old.

“It is 100 percent a sport,” Bainbridge Island Rope Skippers Head Coach Lizzy Sharman said.

“It’s pretty incredible how far the sport has come just since the time I started,” she added. “Some of the younger girls, I’ll show them videos back to when I was a jumper and they laugh because the tricks have just progressed so far. What we would do when we were the big kids on the team is now what the 8-year-olds are doing.”

Sharman, who has been involved with the island team for about 16 years, first as a jumper and now as coach, said the sport is beginning to get the attention it deserves. An international team traveled to the Olympics last year to give a demonstration which was very well received, she said, and many leagues around the nation, and the world, are consolidating and hosting intramural tournaments and exhibitions to make the community more cohesive.

The Bainbridge team is hosting just such an event from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 4 at Woodward Middle School: the 23rd annual Bainbridge Island Invitational Tournament.

Teams will be participating from British Columbia and across Washington and Oregon, with about 190 jumpers set to get in on the action. Girls and boys, ages 8-16, will compete in a number of events, including speed and individual and group freestyle, and also a number of other choreographed performances as well.

The morning hours will focus on the speed and skills competitions, and the afternoon session the creative performances. The event is free and open to the public.

There are 16 girls on the Bainbridge team this year, ages 8-16, and five on the newly-formed “mini” team, ages 6 and 7.

Bainbridge Island Rope Skippers has been active in the world of competitive rope jumping for 20 years and has participated in some prestigious contests and exhibitions, including the 2016 World Jump Rope Federation World Event in Portugal and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. They are a perpetual fixture in the Bainbridge Island Grand Old Fourth of July parade.

The ever-growing popularity of competitive rope jumping, Sharman said, comes from the sport’s customizable nature. There is no playbook.

“I think for a lot of people it’s a sport that’s just so different from every other sport,” she said. “So many people switch between soccer and lacrosse and basketball, and this is just something that appeals to people who maybe aren’t otherwise coordinated.

“We joke [that] there’s people on the team who have never really played another sport, or who are just so energetic and nothing else can calm them down because this sport, it really just kicks you in the butt.”

The diverse ages of the jumpers, Sharman said, is also a draw. In no other sport are athletes so often working with somebody not their own age.

The younger kids enjoy the time spent with the more experienced jumpers and the older kids typically really take to the opportunity to be a mentor, the coach explained.

At Saturday’s tournament, the coach said the audience can expect a plethora of traditional, speed and skill-based contests and more avant-garde, freestyle performances, as well.

“It’s fun because even I, who have been jumping for 16 years, am still so amazed at the creativity that’s put into it,” she said. “Each tournament you go to, you see tricks that you’ve never seen before that people are creating every day, so that part of it is really cool.”

Visit www.facebook.com/Bainbridge-Island-Rope-Skippers-337966076445 to learn more about the team, and their workshops and classes for aspiring and fledgling jumpers.