Lots of practice helps students get up to speed

FRANKLIN — Emilie Daunis crouches at the starting line, her lips pressed tightly together in concentration.

She waits for the signal to hurtle forward and tackle her foe, the thing that can trip up her hands and tie her fingers in knots. Lined up behind her, two fourth-grade friends fidget eagerly, exerting their silent pressure to be smooth, coordinated and above all, fast.

The signal comes and Emilie races toward her opponent, an innocent-looking stack of upside-down plastic cups.

The Moore Elementary fourth-grader is one of thousands of kids hooked on stacking, the latest trend in physical education.

In addition to dribbling balls or skipping rope, the students spend part of their class time stacking cups into fragile towers, unstacking them, and restacking them in another pattern. The goal is to assemble the pyramids as swiftly as possible, with no extra motions or ''fumbles.''

Teachers say the exercise hones hand-eye coordination, encourages ambidexterity and exercises parts of the brain kids don't normally use.

''If I were a classroom teacher I would have them do it for a few minutes every day,'' said Kathy Clark, a P.E. teacher at Moore, which started its cup-stacking unit last year.

More than 70 schools in Tennessee have joined in, adding stacking to their gym lineups.

''It's become more popular in the last few years,'' said Ken Nye, executive director of school health for the state Education Department.

''It's a very popular activity,'' with rules for proper stacking, a world record for speed and a national competition.

Critics of the sport say P.E. time would be better spent running, jumping or otherwise exercising their bodies.

''They should do both,'' said Pola Metz, a specialist at Speed Stacks, a company that promotes the sport worldwide and has sold its cups to 3,500 schools across the nation. ''I don't think you have to do one or the other. You can do both.''

In fact, she said, one of the benefits of stacking is that kids don't have to be athletically inclined to succeed at it.

''It doesn't matter what their ability level is, they can cup stack. They can be athletes or non-athletes, and they can cup stack,'' Metz said.

At Moore, P.E. teacher John Parks solves the problem with mixed activities such as cup-stacking relay races. Kids run from one end of the gym to the other, stack and down-stack the cups waiting there, then run back to tag the next teammate on the hand.

Many of the students own sets of cups and practice at home, trying to better their time.

''It's a self-challenge,'' Parks said. ''They can compete against somebody else, but a lot of times they're competing against themselves.''

Parks learned about stacking at a state P.E. convention last year. ''I laughed at it at first,'' Parks said. ''I thought they were ridiculous. What can that do?''

Then he tried it. A student on the demonstration team challenged him to a race.

''I started fumbling all over the place,'' he said.

Now he can do what's known as a full ''cycle'' in 19 seconds — admittedly not quite on par with the world record of 7.43, held by a high school junior.

He starts his kids as early as kindergarten, where still-clumsy hands practice on pyramids of three.

They learn to alternate hands on every move so they never have to reach across their bodies.

''You don't go up here, you do this,'' said Austin Casey, demonstrating how to grasp the cups by the sides rather than the tops.

''You take turns. Because that's important, because if you do it like this'' — he stacked the cups with one hand — ''then it'll slow you down.''

Jazmin Robertson stacks her cups slowly, placing each arm behind her back in turn to help her remember which hand to use.

The fourth-graders have advanced to a column of 12 cups, which they arrange in different patterns. There's the 3-6-3, a tower of six flanked by smaller stacks of three on each side; the 6-6; and the 1-10-1, which students say is the hardest.

Tyler Patterson has been stacking since he moved to Moore at the beginning of the school year. He can unstack a tower of 10 in a couple of swift motions.

''It was hard to learn because you have to know how to stack them right and keep them from falling onto each other,'' he said.

Brooke Oden has her own set of cups she carries everywhere, especially to the doctor's office.

''When I'm bored I can practice. I pull 'em out a lot at my grandmother's. I have a lot of toys and stuff, but the cups are my favorite toy.''

www.speedstacks.com

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