Highest governing body WSSA | Contact No | |
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Nicknames Cup stacking, speed stacking Registered players 618,394 (number of worldwide participants in the Guinness World Record set in 2015) Team members Individual, doubles, teams of 4 or 5 | ||
Sport stacking (also known as cup stacking or speed stacking) is an individual and team sport that involves stacking plastic cups in specific sequences in as little time as possible. The cups are specially designed to allow for faster times. Participants of sport stacking stack cups in pre-determined sequences, by aligning the inside left lateral adjunct of each cup with that of the next. Sequences are usually pyramids of 3, 6, or 10 cups. Players compete against the clock or another player.
Contents
The governing body setting the rule is the WSSA (World Sport Stacking Association).
History
While working for the Boys & Girls Club of Oceanside, California in 1981, Wayne Godinet came up with the idea for sport stacking. When the children he was working with were tired of playing traditional sports, he took paper cups and asked them to stack the cups as fast as they could. The sport was well received, so Godinet decided to acquire plastic cups to be used by his club. He quickly discovered that his new plastic cups would stick together, so Godinet modified the cups by adding a hole to the bottom of the cups. He formed his own company, Karango Cupstack Co., which manufactured and distributed these modified cups in a variety of colors. By the end of the decade, Godinet estimated he had sold approximately 25,000 sets of cups. During the 1980s, Godinet hosted the annual National Cupstacking Championship in Oceanside. One of the national champions was Matt Adame, a member of Godinet's club, the "Professional Cupstack Drill Team". In November 1990, Adame and his teammates were featured on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
After the sport received national attention on The Tonight Show, Bob Fox, a physical education teacher from Colorado, introduced stacking to his students. Fox's enthusiasm led to the creation of the annual Colorado state tournament in 1997. In 1998, Fox, together with Larry Goers, created a line of proprietary sport stacking products including the patented timing system known as the StackMat. Fox started traveling across the country in 2000 to promote Speed Stacks full-time. In 2001 Fox founded the World Cup Stacking Association (WCSA) to formalize the sport's rules and sanction competitions worldwide. As the sport began to spread to neighboring states, the WCSA hosted the first Rocky Mountain Cup Stacking Championships, where Fox's daughter, Emily Fox, broke her own world record by completing the cycle in 7.43 seconds. The next year, the first WCSA World Championship took place at the Denver Coliseum and has since been held annually. The WCSA formally titled the sport "sport stacking" and changed their name to the World Sport Stacking Association (WSSA) in 2005. The WSSA cited the public recognition that stacking is considered a sport as the reason for the name change.
Equipment
Official sport stacking cups are specially designed to prevent sticking and to allow the competitor to go faster. The cups are reinforced with several ribs on the inside which separate the cups when they are nestled. The exterior's slightly textured to allow better grip. The insides are very smooth and slide past each other easily. The tops of the cups have 1-4 holes to allow ventilation so the cups do not stick. One special line of cups has cups without tops to further decrease air resistance.
One can purchase the specially designed "stacking mats", also called "stack mats", which are mats connected to a sensitive timer. These are used for official tournament timing, as well as casual play timing or practice timing.
Special weighted training cups, called "Super Stacks," are made from metal and are most commonly used directly before competing. The added weight is intended to make the regular cups feel lighter.
Rules
There are three sequences stacked in official sport stacking events, that are defined by the rule book handed out by the WSSA:
Common for all sequences are these major rules:
There are three main categories of competing that WSSA-sanctioned tournaments offer:
Benefits
Proponents of the sport say participants learn cooperation, ambidexterity and hand–eye coordination.
A university study by Dr. Brian Udermann, currently at the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse, confirms that stacking improves hand–eye coordination & reaction time by up to 30% (published in the scientific Journal "Perceptual & Motor Skills" in 2004)
An EEG-study by Melanie A. Hart, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Health, Exercise and Sport Sciences at the Texas Tech University support the claim that cup stacking does utilize both sides of the brain. During the left-hand condition, activity in the right hemisphere was larger than the left, while for the right-hand task, the left hemisphere was greater than the right. Their scientific poster on that topic got awarded by the AAHPERD On the other hand, Hart couldn't get the same results as Udermann when studying improvement on reaction time.
Gibbons, E., Hendrick, J. L., & Bauer, J. State University of New York studied the effects on the reaction time and confirmed Udermann rather than Hart, stating "that the results agreed with the claims made by Speed Stacks, in which practicing cup stacking can improve reaction time. They also state "Even 1 hour of cup stacking practice can improve reaction time in young adults." Speed stacking was also seen as helping people improve in other sports, because it helps to improve the hand–eye coordination.
The Department of Kinesiology of the Towson University, Towson, MD studied the influence of participation in a 6-week bimanual coordination program on Grade 5 students' reading achievement with Sport Stacking being the bimanual activity. A significant increase was found for the experimental group on Comprehension skills, proving once and for all that Sport Stacking may improve students' reading comprehension skills, regardless of sex. Published June 2007.
In 2007 Cupstacking itself was tested in a study at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Competition
Most sport stacking competitions are geared toward children, with for ages 18 and under. There are also divisions for "Special Stackers" (disabled competitors).
The WSSA has set the following protocol for the setting of world records:
- Must use WSSA-approved sport stacking cups.
- Must use a StackMat and tournament display.
- Must be video taped for review and verification purposes.
- Must use 3 judges (one designated Head Judge) to judge each try. After each try the 3 judges confer. The head judge will then designate with a color-coded card the outcome of that try. (Green-clean run, yellow-try in question (immediate video review) & red–scratch.)
- A finals judge may not be a family member or the sport stacking instructor of the stacker.
The competition's divided into 12 different age divisions, ranging from 6 & under to seniors (60 & up). State, national & world records are recorded on the WSSA website.
Popular culture
In The Flash (2014 TV series) episode "King Shark", Wally, Barry, Iris and Joe play a game of sport stacking. In the Phineas & Ferb episode "Thaddeus & Thor", Dr. Doofenshmirtz claims to hold the cup stacking world record, and gives a demonstration. In the Zeke & Luther episode "The Big Red Stacking Machine", Luther is found to have a natural talent for cup stacking. In The Cleveland Show episode "Ladies' Night", Rallo plays a game of cup stacking.
The 2010 film, Stacker, was directed, produced, and released by Danger Films and features some of the most prominent stackers in the country, including The Purugganan family, the Myers family, Lawrence Maceren, Drew Wilfahrt, Tyler Cole, Emma Slabach and The Haig family.
The online film Stacks of Glory is a mockumentary starring sport stacking champion Luke Myers.
Stacking appeared in a commercial for McDonald's in 2011, and for Dr. Pepper in 2013.