For those of you who remember me from all those years ago, I began teaching art at the elementary and middle school level - I left my position as a leather worker and have been in education since 2021 and I love it!
I’m looking to start an afterschool yoyo club for my students and need some throws (preferably plastic with responsive & unresponsive bearings, string, and pads)
I imagine enrollment will be anywhere between 10 and 20 kids.
My school has a budget for this but since I teach in an underserved school in New York City, the budget won’t cover everything to get the club up and running, due to this I figured I’d see if the community would be willing to help out!
Of course, I will happily provide pictures and video updates of the kid’s progress in the club!
I aim to launch the yoyo club sometime in May so I’m hoping to get all my ducks aligned before then
Other than that, maybe someone here has some extra stuff they can send you. Unfortunately, I have a pretty modest collection, so I can’t help in that regard. Good luck!
Have you reached out to manufacturers directly to ask them about supplies? When I was starting my yoyo club I was able to get yoyos for discounted prices that way along with some string and stuff like that. I believe YYE also offers a discounted club price on their Snapback yoyo (at least, that’s what the page for it says).
Yoyos by Sam, rain city skills, yye, and Duncan are your best bet for relatively cheap yo-yos. Reach out to them directly they can give you club pricing annd such and bulk pads and bearings hollywood modern yo-yos is the move.
I have contacts if you DM me I’m just not putting all them on blast in public lol
RCS and Duncan have the cheapest options. Or that China direct source for some magic yoyo one thirds but shipping is not quick on those.
Personally if I had a better budget it would be yye or recess.
Sadly last I reached out to yye on the grant program it was on hold for a bit. Would love to see it get moving but while I’ve offered to assist I think at this point it’s just an exercise in patients on that one
Yea, I was reading some old threads and it seemed like Andre was still working on getting everything up and running. I thought maybe that form would at least get some traction in the meantime.
Lemme tell u, ur gonna need a lot of string, especially since the kids will most likely get a knot before they even do anything. What type of tricks do u want to teach them? What levels are there going to be? Before u do anything, just have a schedule of what you’re going to do. Theres some string at offset yoyo that u can get for a large bundle. It u can get a 100 pack of string with a bearing for 30$. I’d watch brandons video first, but i think that would be a good option. Just make sure that if u really want the kids to get good at yoyoing, make sure the equipment is not cheap nor over the top.
Rain City Skills has a bunch of inexpensive light-up beginner yoyos for sale. They are super affordable although probably not the most durable throws.
If you contact Jeremy directly he may be willing to help you out further, but either way those yoyos are really inexpensive if you want a bit of bulk.
Edit: I just looked and he has the beginner plastic yoyos at like $1 each when purchased in bulk, and the rebrand is like $11 each. But definitely reach out to him directly.
I’ve never been able to get in contact with yyf directly without going through @yoyodoc which I feel like shouldn’t be the solution. It’s like I’ve only ever got in contact with Duncan by emailing @bjardin who is awesome
They also have the rebrand (which is admittedly just a myy one third you can get for less on some sites) but Jeremy is awesome folks willing to help out.
thank you all for the suggestions! I didn’t expect such a strong response so quickly
I’m planning to teach the kiddos how to properly throw first and foremost, everything else will fall in line after that, I prefer aluminum throws because they can handle being mistreated vs. their plastic counterparts (hitting the floor, being dropped, etc.)
I will look into the above avenues during my time off Easter weekend - a lot of things to get in order but I’m excited about spreading the joy of yo to the next generation!!
A mix of plastic and monometals is probably the way to go.
For budget monometals, I recommend the MagicYoyo V8.
They are around $17 on amazon but go on sale for 50% off pretty regularly. You would probably have to keep checking to snag a few of those on sale, but at that sale price they are one if the biggest bargains in yoyo. Pretty nice throws too, i really like mine.
Honestly plastic holds up better than al in my experience. Al gets dinged to heck but poly carb holds till it cracks. The al might be a whole yoyo longer but it won’t be a good whole yoyo. Also kids tend to swing yo-yos wildly and hit themselves and others and usually plastic hurts just a tad less. Not as sharp of edges usually.
If I had the budget I would just get a whole bunch of AOE and first base and use those but that’s expensive.
A fleet of whips will hold up better than any yoyo out there though. If you could get in touch with yyf which is so hard for no reason.
