Students at Auburn’s Evergreen Heights Elementary School got a rare chance last week to get in on some Guinness World Record-breaking fun when the school took part in the “Most People Sport Stacking at Multiple Locations in One Day.”
The event, organized by the World Sport Stacking Association (WSSA) globally and by Evergreen’s physical education and music teacher John Ansotigue locally, featured 196 of the school’s students helping to break the previous record of 222,560 stackers.
“We did it during PE time and recess time,” Ansotigue said. “We did it outside and inside, in hallways and in the gym. And it was a perfectly beautiful, sunny day for it.”
Though the WSSA is still tallying the results, based on e-mail correspondence and what’s expected in the mail it anticipates that the 250,000 stackers will meet their goal with ease.
Stackers throughout the world committed to sport stacking for a 30-minute stretch during the course of this year’s Guinness World Records Day, with most of the stacking taking place in physical education classes, where students stacked and unstacked specially-designed plastic cups in prescribed sequences.
They raced against the clock in individual timed events, competed in relays, and got their hearts pumping through a variety of fitness stacking activities. Once stackers logged their 30 minutes, organizers were required to complete a Guinness Verification Form and submit it to the WSSA.
“Our first verification was logged from New Zealand in the middle of the night, and we’ve been receiving faxes from all over the globe ever since,” said Mark Lingle, Director of the World Sport Stacking Association. All told, 28 countries had stackers registered, primarily in the United States and Canada, but including such countries as Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, Nepal, Poland, South Africa, Sudan and the United Kingdom.
Once the WSSA has accounted for all the Verification Forms, it will submit the final number of stackers to Guinness World Records for official recognition.
For Ansotigue and the students at Evergreen, it’s more about the fun and benefits that come with sport stacking.
Ansotigue first discovered sport stacking in 1998.
“I was teaching elementary music and PE and thought it was a wonderful activity for music kids, but also a great activity for PE,” he said. “The main thrust of sport stacking is the development of ambidexterity, using the right and left hand together, and hand-eye coordination.”
Ansotigue continued:
“When the left and right brains have to go to work and work hand-in-hand, things start to happen,” he said. “It’s all about patterns. Music is patterns, math is patterns and reading is patterns.”
Ansotigue said the activity was also appealing because the kids like it so much.
“They love it,” he said. “They think they’re just having fun. I do activities in the classroom, where the class is the whole team. So they learn teamwork and how to work together. The best thing is they don’t even realize they’re learning.”
