Stacking up: Richmond students participate in Guinness attempt

From the Friday, Nov. 14, 2008 edition of the Northwest Herald:

Stacking up: Richmond students participate in Guinness attempt
By DIANA SROKA - dsroka@nwherald.com

RICHMOND – Kindergarten student Zofia O’Bara squats near a mat in the Richmond Grade School gym.

She looks down at a set of 12 plastic, bright-red stacking cups in front of her. Then she looks to the head of the class, where her physical education teacher, Kathie Sembach, has arranged her set of cups into three-by-three pyramids.

Ready, set, go: O’Bara starts shuffling her cups, trying to imitate Sembach’s pattern. The hardest part?

“All of it, pretty much,” O’Bara says with a sigh, just before she successfully completes the pattern in a matter of minutes.

Students at Richmond Grade School were among an estimated 175,000 worldwide who joined together Thursday to break the Guinness World Record for sport stacking. The goal was to get as many people as possible across the world stacking all on a single day.

Last year, about 143,530 people across the globe participated in the event. This year, it’s estimated that more than 175,000 participated. By Thursday afternoon, almost 200 Richmond Grade School students had taken their turn.

Sembach said the school wouldn’t know until today or next week whether the record was broken. Sembach had integrated stacking into her physical education classes for the past nine years, but it’s not all fun and games. She said it taught her students integral physical and mental development skills.

For younger children, the activity increases ambidexterity and uses both the right and left sides of the brains, helping children become more bilateral, she said. It improves hand-eye coordination, and older children are drawn to its competitive nature.

“It helps with everything,” Sembach said. “There’s a lot of concentration in what they’re doing.”

The stacking cups come in bright colors and have holes on the bottom so they don’t stick. Sembach said it’s been so popular at the school that some parents even have ordered sets of the cups for their homes.

O’Bara’s favorite part of the activity were the formations.

“I like to stack the three-by-threes,” she said. “That’s my favorite part of stacking.”

What’s the scoop?

Richmond Grade School students were among tens of thousands participating worldwide Thursday in a stacking event in hopes of breaking a Guinness World Record.

It’s estimated that more than 175,000 participated, which would beat the 143,530 who participated last year.

Official results, however, won’t be known until today or next week.