Royal Oaks Elementary Schools Men's Hockey in Speed Stacking
November 03, 2005 | Men's Hockey
When Coach Eaves was a guest speaker at the Royal Oaks Elementary School fitness fair last year, he stumbled upon speed stacking and decided to expose his team to the activity.
Fast forward to this fall, where Brad Lutes, a physical education and health teacher at Royal Oaks of the Sun Prairie Area School District, brought nine fourth and fifth grade students to teach the Badger hockey players how to perform the activity back on Sept. 22.
The kids in Sun Prairie have only been speed stacking for two years, as part of a three-year, $1.2 million PEP Grant that has allowed the district to add a number of new activities. This was the school's first outside trip or opportunity to teach others.
The kids selected to attend were drawn at random from a total of nearly 60 that were interested.
'We had a group of elementary school kids come in and teach us,' said A.J. Degenhardt. 'You've got 12 cups - you make a pyramid of three, a pyramid of six, and another pyramid of three, take them all down, bring them all back together, then you make a pyramid of six, a pyramid of six, then you take those down. Then you take two off and put one on each side. Then you make a pyramid of 10 and take those down. You go for the fastest time. I don't know that it matters if you go left to right or right to left, but you have to take them down in the same order. '
Degenhardt proved to be a quick study at cup speed stacking.
'All the kids went against each other and they took their fastest time and then we did head-to-head matchups and once you lost you were done. I ended up getting lucky and winning those.
'At the time, I was fastest on the team so I went up against the fastest kid. I was winning and then I messed up and she ended up beating me. We rematched and then she beat me pretty bad. They do it for gym class and practice at home, so they do it quite a bit.'
The set up for speed stacking is rather sophisticated. Plastic cups are used the slide well over each other and don't stick to allow speedy movements. There is also a mat with a automated timer built in. A run starts with hands on the timer. As soon as hands lose contact, the clock starts, then stops when the person smacks their hands back on the starting spot.
'We keep it in the locker room,' said Degenhardt. 'Anytime, we can go up and do them and if you've got someone to witness a best time you write it up on the board. Right now I think Gilbert has the best time. I think we've got three sets in there.
'There is a video of a lady that set the world record in something like seven seconds, which is pretty ridiculous. I think Gilbert did it in 14.12 seconds, which is pretty fast.'
There is a World Sport Stacking Association, including a Web site, worldsportstackingassociation.org, that gives more information on the activity. Nearly 1,000 stackers from five foreign countries and 21 states participated in the 2005 World Sport Stacking Championships held at the Denver Coliseum in Colorado last April.
'It is fun,' added Degenhardt. 'It is definitely good for hand-eye coordination. Maybe doing that before practice or before a game will get you ready a little bit and get you focused.'
'This has been a tremendous experience for our young students and Coach Eaves and his players were extremely classy and gracious hosts!, ' said Lutes. 'My students are still talking about how cool it was to be in the Badger Locker room.'
