In 2002 my daughter, a 2nd grade teacher in Pittsburgh, Penn, gave an assignment to her students to recite "choosing it" ["counting out"] rhymes. She taped their oral presentations and later played the tape so that the students could hear themselves.

Knowing my interest in children's rhymes, my daughter played the tape for me, and I transcribed it. One boy recited a rhyme that begins with the "icka backa" portion:

Icka backa soda cracker
Icka backa boo.
In comes out.
And out goes you!

-snip-

Btw, all of these students are African Americans.

"Icka" is pronounced "EYE-kah". "Backa" is pronounced
"BAH-kah". "Cracker" is pronounced to rhyme with "Icka" and "backa."

In 2004, I observed another boy from the same school using this rhyme to choose two team captains. The boy was selected by a supervising adult because he was the first child to raise his hand.

The girls & boys huddled around the boy and stretched out their right foot. The other children remained silent as the boy recited the rhyme.
With each word of the rhyme he tapped a different child's foot.
The child whose foot was tapped on the word "you" was out. This process continued from the beginning until one child was left. This child was a captain of a team. The process started again to select the 2nd team captain.

Once the captains were picked, they took turns selecting a member of their team. Team members were selected by calling out the name of a child. Of course, in races, the fastest children get picked first.
And in tug of wars the strongest children get picked first.

If the game is played a second time, one way to boost the self-esteem of the two children who are picked last, is to have them serve as the new team captains.