Lincoln Middle School kids master the sport of stacking

Logan Heflin's hands are a blur as he rapidly stacks and unstacks 12 brightly colored plastic cups on a special timing mat. He finishes the sequence and checks the clock: 10 seconds - fast, but not fast enough.

The Lincoln Middle School seventh-grader lives for speed, and in the world of competitive cup stacking - also known as speed stacking or sport stacking - speed is everything.

"I like the challenge," he said. "I love to run and be fast. This incorporates my love for speed and going fast. ... It's the best feeling in the world."

More than 250 LMS students spent their P.E. classes stacking cups Thursday as part of an international effort to break the world record for "Most People Sport Stacking at Multiple Locations in One Day." The school also helped set last year's world record of 316,736 students stacking at once, said LMS P.E. teacher Jackie Webb. LMS was one of 64 Washington schools participating in the effort Thursday. Each student must participate for 30 minutes, and at the end of the day, Webb sent the results to the World Sport Stacking Association, the organization that sponsors the event.

"The idea is to use both hands and incorporate both sides of the brain," said P.E. teacher Pat Ogden.

Along with the obvious hand-eye coordination benefits of cup stacking, students in Webb's class received a workout during Thursday's stack-a-thon.

"We're trying to incorporate fitness into stacking," she said.

Students ran from station to station, stacking 12 cups in different sequences, and a sequence known as the "cycle." Each station also had instructions for a different exercise, like running in place or jumping jacks.

Heflin's forte is the cycle, which is a sequence of four different cup patterns in order: 3-6-3, 6-6, 1-10-1 and back to 3-6-3. It takes a combination of hand-eye coordination, manual dexterity and carefully memorized patterns repeated over time. Heflin's record time in the cycle is 7.72 seconds.

Stacking at speeds like that isn't something you pick up overnight. Heflin was first introduced to the sport a couple of years ago at Heights Elementary in Clarkston. After a brief hiatus, he rediscovered his passion for stacking last year.

"I started again and just fell in love with it," he said. For the past year, he's practiced about 30 minutes a day.

"When you first start, it's hard, but it becomes second nature. ... It becomes a part of you," he said.

With a sub-10-second time in the cycle, Heflin is eligible to compete nationally. His goal is to someday beat the world record cycle time of 5.93 seconds, held for the past three years by 14-year-old Steven Purugganan of New York.

"I'm hoping to break his record," he said.

Webb said since she introduced it to the middle school a few years ago, stacking has become a popular activity for students.

"A lot of the kids like it," she said.

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Gaboury may be contacted at kgaboury@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2275.