Sport stacking

Sport stacking

A 1-10-1 being upstacked as part of the cycle stack
Highest governing body	WSSA
Nicknames	Cup stacking, speed stacking
First played	1981, Oceanside, California, U.S.
Registered players	618,394 (number of worldwide participants in the Guinness World Record set in 2015)
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	Individual, doubles, teams of 4 or 5
Mixed gender	Yes, but usually in separate divisions
Type	Indoor, Outdoor
Equipment	Cups, mat, timer
Presence
Country or region	Worldwide
Olympic	Only AAU Junior Olympics

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.

The governing body setting the rule is the WSSA (World Sport Stacking Association).

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.