Cup stackers show fast hands

BY SIMON WOOD

There's more than one way to stack a cup, but faster is better for New Zealand's newest representative sports team - the Black Stacks.

The team, made up of four schoolboys from Manawatu and Gisborne, is preparing to head to Denver, Colorado, for the World Sport Stacking Championships later this month.

Competitors, usually school-aged children, use a set of custom-made plastic cups to build and take down pyramids as quickly as possible.

A clock records their time to one-hundreth of a second, and the person with the fastest hands is crowned champion.

This is the first year a New Zealand team has travelled to the World Championships, which attracts more than 1000 competitors from around the globe.

"You need co-ordination, focus, concentration, and just fast hands," Black Stacks captain Michael Sadlier said.

The 13-year-old took up the sport after a teacher at his intermediate school showed him a video of stackers from overseas.

The sport's unique skill-set is proving popular in schools, and Michael's mother Tanya Sadlier has started an import business for equipment.

She said about 300 schools have expressed an interest in buying cups, because teachers liked how it taught pupils to use both sides of their brain and both hands.

Michael also has a theory for the surge in popularity.

"Probably because everyone wants to beat their friends and because of how simple it is."

The sport's blue riband event is the "Cycle Stack", where competitors have to build three sets of increasingly large pyramids.

Eleven-year-old American Steve Purugganan, the world's best stacker, can do that in just 5.93 seconds.

Michael, who thinks his personal best of 7.84 seconds is the fastest in New Zealand, knows how fierce the competition will be and has been practicing nightly in preparation for the tournament.

"I'm not really sure what to expect because there's quite a lot of fast people there," he said.

Plans are already underway for a National Championships in Palmerston North later this year.

- © Fairfax NZ News