SISTER LAKES — About 200 of Gail Gersonde’s Sister Lakes Elementary School K-5 physical education students threw themselves into a frenzied cup craze Thursday, taking part in the sixth annual World Sport Stacking Association (WSSA) Stack Up.
Guinness World Records terms it the “world’s largest sport stacking event,” linking Dowagiac in a “track meet for the hands at warp speed” with Germany, Singapore, South Africa, New Zealand, Colombia, Taiwan and Israel.
Last year, 316,736 stackers participated to break the previous year’s Stack Up record, 276,053.
During the course of Guinness World Records Day Thursday, sport stackers up stack and down stack pyramids in prescribed patterns at lightning speed for at least 30 minutes, combined with a variety of fitness activities which keep students in motion.
In fact, during Stack Tag, racing between four points, they look like dogs chasing their tails.
Students up stack and down stack 12 colorful Speed Stacks cups in predetermined sequences as fast as they can.
Stackers race against the clock. In three-stack, children use both hands and a soft, light touch — right, left, right or left-right-left. With a goal of two seconds, fourth grader Lamberto Paredes achieved a blink-and-you-miss-it time of .96 second, which music teacher Tara Fletcher logged on the prize sheet behind one of six stations.
Sport stacking is in more than 34,000 schools and youth organizations. It appeals to teachers such as Gersonde because it promotes hand-eye coordination and teamwork as well as fitness.
Sport stacking originated in the early 1980s in southern California and received national attention in 1990 on a segment of the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.
That was where it first captured the imagination of Bob Fox, then an elementary classroom teacher in Colorado.
Speed Stacks founder Fox says, “When I first became passionate about sport stacking in 1995, a lot of people would hear about it and scratch their heads.
Is stacking a sport? The only way to explain it was to show them firsthand. Sport stacking is truly something you have to see to believe. I absolutely love the challenge of turning skeptics into believers, and the list of stacking enthusiasts grows every day.”
As do equipment options, including shot glass-sized minis, heavier metal cups for training and Battlestack, where two foes face off against each other.