Speedy stacking — Kids reach new heights of fast, furious, healthy fun

The plastic cups are upside down, stacked one on top of the other, so at first glance this looks less like a sport and more like a buffet table. But then second-grader Izzy Srivastava gets to work. Suddenly, cups are in motion and then, well, let Izzy explain: "You take three with the hand you write with, and two with the hand you don't write with, and then you put down two of the two and one of the three, and then you put these two on these three, and then one more on top of the two, and then with the hand you write with. ... "

In the world of sport stacking, this maneuver is known as a 6-6, which is technically not a stand-alone stack but is part of an event called the "cycle." Currently the world record holder for the cycle is David Wolf of Germany, who in 2007, at the age of 12, completed it in 7.15 seconds. If you think that's no big deal, you have obviously never tried to stack, unstack and restack 12 plastic cups in pyramids as fast as you can.

The 2008 World Sport Stacking Championships take place on April 5 and 6 in Denver, near the home of the Colorado-based World Sport Stacking Association. There will be more than 1,100 competitors from countries as far away as Singapore, and 90 percent of those competitors will be children and teens. Every year, more and more adults compete, says WSSA executive director Matt Reed. Still, perhaps because sport stacking was introduced in schools and after-school programs, it continues to be mostly a youth activity.

Sport stacking is flourishing in Michigan, Texas, Colorado, Florida and California, says Reed. It's still relatively new to Utah, where a smattering of elementary and middle schools offer it as a "nontraditional activity" in physical education. Proponents of sport stacking say it helps improve the kind of hand-eye coordination and ambidexterity that can transfer to other skills such as basketball and piano playing.

"It's a track meet for your hands," says Reed.

Originally sport stacking was called cup stacking, but that made it sound like "little kids just playing with cups," says Reed. The first time he himself tried stacking, he says, he was a physical education teacher, and he brought home a set of the cups to try out. "Two hours later, I was dripping with sweat, my heart rate was up and I felt invigorated."

A sport, reasons Reed, is something that requires skill and can be done in competition. People eat hot dogs in competitive eating contests and that's considered a sport, he notes. And even though he's not sure where he stands on that, the point is surely cup stacking requires more skill than wolfing down hot dogs or massive amounts of mayonnaise.