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Cup stacking 'looks so silly' but it's popular in PE class Knight Ridder News MIAMI - It's a sport that takes the physical out of physical education, a sport that favors students comfortable with joysticks instead of being jocks. It's called "cup stacking" - and it pretty much works as it sounds. You have a dozen plastic cups. You stack them multiple times in predetermined sequences. May the fastest stacker win. Cup stacking promoters say their sport is practiced at more than 7,000 schools across the country. It's unclear if cup stacking will one day take its place alongside ice dancing in the Olympics, or fade away as a fleeting fad. But one thing is clear: Cup stacking is a sign of how the nation's physical education classes have changed. Dodgeball is politically incorrect. Elastic waistband shorts are out. And the very name of PE was long ago switched to "kinesiology." "The old days of PE are over," said Arthur Adler of Meadowbrook Elementary in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., whose students stack. "When I went to school, and when they taught you to play volleyball, they would teach you how to rotate and everyone would stand still while one person dominated. We don't do that anymore." When cup stacking is done well, a stacker's hands move like a hummingbird's wings. Beginners struggle, their coordination sluggish, their cups crashing to the floor. "It looks so silly," said PE teacher Wendy Wood, who saw cup stacking at a conference and brought it to Pioneer Middle School in Cooper City, Fla. "And when you tell a group of eighth-graders they are going to be stacking cups, their first reaction is, 'This is stupid.' But they are really developing important skills, and now they love it." Wood's students are completing a two-week course in cup stacking. They may have thought it was stupid once, but now they are hooked. Some stand over a table, challenging, taunting one another. "Twenty seconds! Yeah!" one student yells, after completing a successful stack. The unofficial record at Pioneer is just under 18 seconds. The world record in that event - known as the "cycle" - is 7.43 seconds. "I think that's more impressive than a 400-foot home run," said Pioneer student Amanda Espinosa. "This really improves hand-eye coordination. It helps me in basketball. But when I first heard about this, I didn't think it was a sport. I thought it was something she made up." The standard stack is a "3-6-3." A stacker builds a pyramid out of the first three cups, a bigger pyramid out of the next six cups and finally a third pyramid out of the final three. All pyramids are then dismantled, the cups re-stacked to their original place. What separates a pro from a poser is the ability to use right and left hands equally - and quickly. Cup stacking is believed to have started in the 1980s in California, as a made-up game at after-school rec centers. But an enterprising teacher from Colorado is credited with helping the game take off. Bob Fox saw a demonstration on "The Tonight Show" nearly 15 years ago, thought it was brilliant, formed a company, and now promotes and lives off the sport. In addition to selling the $500 startup kit for cup stacking, Fox helped organize the World Cup Stacking Association, which holds a world championship each year in Colorado. About 1,000 students compete in different events - they compete in different ways to stack to the cups - for the right to be speed stacking champ. |