Stacking Up Against One Another

Students from six states converged Saturday at Jacobsville Elementary School
in Pasadena to compete in a fast-paced, coordination-building sport stacking
tournament.

The coordinator of the 2011 Jacobsville Sport Stacking Competition, Judith Schmid, said she was pleased with the way parents helped to make the tournament a success. Approximately 200 students took part in the competition.

“We ran exceptionally well. We were actually ahead of schedule,” she said.

Schmid is a physical educator at JES and has been a sport stacking official, known as a relay manager, in Denver, CO. Last year, she took an Anne Arundel County All-Star team to Denver for competition. She has been directing the sport stacking tournament at JES for eight years and has worked at the school for 27 years.

Competitors from Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware met for several hours at the school on Mountain Road to see who would be the best stackers.

Schmid said the tournament in Pasadena is one of the largest of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic area along with the Mid-Atlantic regional tournament and the Maryland state tournament.

The competitors were from several different schools, including North Laurel Elementary in Delaware, Crofton Woods Elementary School, Deale Elementary School, Southern Middle School, Jacobsville Elementary School, Chesapeake Bay Middle School, Seneca Elementary School in Baltimore County, Four  Seasons Elementary School in Gambrills, Oak Hill Elementary School in Severna Park, Tabernacle Learning Academy in Laurel and Centreville Elementary School.

Although sport stacking may not look like running a sprint, Schmid said some of the competitors on Saturday are some of the best of the best, and are highly coordinated athletes.

Information gathered from studies indicates stacking can help people with their
reading skills, and studies have confirmed that the sport uses both hemispheres of the brain.

Schmidt said she hopes more people will come to sport stacking competitions to see how good some of the competitors are.

“Every one of them was active," said Schmid. "They were active and up and moving."

Some of the winners from Saturday include: individual all-around champions, first place, Jonathan Scannell, Griswold, PA; Matthew Hill, Virginia Beach, VA; Michael Renga, Red Lion, PA; Benjamin Meilinger, Crofton Woods Elementary School; and Sharon Hadder, North Laurel Elementary School in Delaware.

For more information about sport stacking, visit the website of the World Sport
Stacking Association, www://www.worldsportstackingassociation.org. The
organization is based in Englewood, CO.