The cup-stacking from: http:www.packaging-paper
boy-king from: http:www.packaging-paper
ordinary plastic drinking glasses from: http:www.packaging-paper
Hes the Michael Phelps of his sport Robert Horry Lakers Jersey , this 10-year-old Filipino-American boy whos in town to promote awareness in the dubious skill of arranging plastic tumblers at the quickest possible time. But make no mistake: Steven Purugganan is acknowledged as the fastest in the entire planet at sport stacking.
Steve actually holds three of the five current world records in as many events in sport stacking, also known as cup stacking or speed stacking. My 13-year-old boy enlightened me about the sport as we looked over a set of what looked like ordinary plastic drinking glasses at a mall recently.
Theyre what you use, my son explained, in the tone reserved by young people for clueless older persons like their parents, as we looked at a kid gingerly stacking the colored tumblers, pyramid-fashion. But you have to do it really fast. Its supposed to develop hand-eye coordination and being ambidextrous. A Filipino boy is world champ.
And you have to watch Steve on YouTube to believe how fast he can arrange and rearrange those plastic cups. The posted video of his record-setting 6.21-second time to win the extremely complicated cycle stacking event to win the World Sport Stacking Associations premier individual title last April (to beat his own best time of 6.5 seconds) shows how difficult the sport can beand how good little Steve is at it.
Now, you may ask: What kind of sport is it, if a 10-year-old can be world champ? Also Michael Cooper Lakers Jersey , are we so starved for sports heroes that (with apologies to Manny Pacquiao) we must celebrate the exploits of a kid whose claim to fame is the blinding speed with which he stacks plastic cups?
But before we attempt to answer these near-rhetorical questions, lets take a look at what sport stacking is all about. According to the new sports Web site, sport stacking is an individual and team activity played using plastic cups that was invented by someone named Wayne Godinet in the early 1980s at a southern California boys and girls club.
The sport first received national attention during an exhibition in 1990 on the top-rated The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Godinet, who invented the first formations and gave the sport the name of Karango Cup Stack, formed the first organized Cupstack group. Later he worked together with a physical education teacher named Bob Fox and together they organized the earliest competitions in 1998 in Oceanside, California and Denver, Colorado.
Fox further developed the sport and invented new formations and annual competitions that would become the annual championships that take place in the US today. Fox also changed the sports name to Speed Stacks.
By 2004, a governing body changed the name again to sports stacking to give it immediate identification as a competitive sport. The World Sport Stacking Association also began holding competitions that it (quite naturally) started calling the grand-sounding World Sport Stacking Championships.
Participants of sport stacking arrange standardized Louis Williams Lakers Jersey , competition-spec cups up and down in pre-determined sequences, competing against the clock or another player. Sequences are usually pyramids of three, six, or 10 cups. Proponents of the sport say participants learn teamwork and cooperation, aside from the ambidexterity and hand-eye coordination that my son talked about.
Leave it to the Americans to make an organized competition out of what was, in the beginning, a childs parlor game. By the time the WSSA started holding world championships, the rules of the game had been set in stoneincluding the size Larry Nance Jr. Lakers Jersey , weight and texture (to prevent them from sticking) of the tumblers, age divisions, the official mats and timers on which tournaments are held, a three-judge system with football-style red and yellow cards and instant video replays of questioned performances.
When Steve Purugganan arrived on the scene last year, records were being set on an annual basis. In November 2006, one of the sports oldest records the four-year-old mark set by Emily Fox in the cycle stack eventwas eclipsed by Robin Stangenberg with a time of 7.41 seconds. That was trumped in April 2007 by David Wolf of Germany, who set the new world record of 7.25 seconds at the 2007 World Sport Stacking Championships in Denver.
Then Purugganan broke Wolfs record with a 7.23 in Attica, New York Larry Nance Lakers Jersey , only to lose it again to Wolfs 7.15 in Germany in November last year.
Last February, Timo Ruehl made history by stacking the first-ever sub-seven cycle at a sanctioned tournament, with a time of 6.80. Then last Feb. 16, Steve took all three world records, getting a 1.96 in the 3-3-3, a 2.38 in the 3-6-3, and a 6.65 in the cycle. Steven, with his brother Andrew Kurt Rambis Lakers Jersey , also took the doubles world record with a 7.84.
Then on April 6, during the 2008 World Championships in Denver, Steve broke two of these records. He now holds the current 3-3-3 (1.86 sec), 3-6-3 (2.34) and cycle records, the last one being the 6.21 immortalized on YouTube.
Im very excited because I am the fastest person in the world, Steve told reporters upon arriving in Manila, where he will perform in exhibition events in selected schools and other venues. I am trying to get less than six seconds in world time so I am looking forward to the next tournament, he said.
And while we welcome Steve and his parents (whom he understandably cant travel without yet) Julius Randle Lakers Jersey , we must now try to answer the questions we posed earlier. Apparently, sport stacking favors children, who are not only quicker than older competitors but who also intuitively understand the logic of somethin