World record attempt!
St Mary’s School students shouted their support for each other as they spent Guinness World Records Day trying to set a new record for sport stacking.
The event was called Stack Up and the record they attempted to beat was for the most people sport stacking at multiple locations in one day.
The current record was set in 2016 when 622,809 stackers from schools around New Zealand, Hungary, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Colombia and Taiwan participated.
Teacher Ian Kerr said sport stacking was big at St Mary’s.
“I saw it on YouTube and I wanted to teach my class so I started with one set of cups and my watch to time it. I quickly realised that the kids were really into it,” Kerr said.
“They like competing against each other, they like setting times and you don’t have to be the fastest stacker, you set yourself a time and you beat the time.”
To qualify for the record, students had to be stacking for half an hour last Thursday and every student at the school on London St took part.
Joining them from New Zealand were St Joseph’s School, Woodville School and Muritai School, but not all schools could stack at the same time.
“It officially doesn’t stop until tomorrow because the other countries haven’t even woken up yet,” Kerr said.
“You have to wait for all of the countries around the world to verify that they’ve done it before the results can come in.”
St Mary’s School students were part of an effort that set the record in 2015 and the certificate is proudly displayed in the school office.
However, the students have been too busy with other activities for the past couple of years to participate and they were not able to break the record again the following year.
“You can hear the kids yelling and screaming when they’re stacking,” Kerr said.
“It’s good for the students to be able to have a certificate that says they’re a world title holder and we love stacking in this school, so that’s just the icing on the cake really.”
Unfortunately everybody must wait until the end of the year when the official results to come in before they learn if they are world recordbeaters.