"In the interest of providing a sports fix for those of you suffering the post-Super Bowl blahs, this column is about John Beaumont's first-grade class and everything you'd ever want to know about exciting sport stacking.

OK, you never saw it on ESPN.

But when I laid eyes on the blur of hands that was 6-year-old Collin Wolf building and disassembling a six-cup pyramid, I suspected I was witnessing a sport that could challenge the reflexes of goalie Patrick Roy, the speed of base-stealer Rickey Henderson, the finesse of Tiger Woods sinking a 20-footer and the steely nerve of a contestant trying to ignore a tarantula while answering a question on ABC's "The Chair."

"Do that again," I said.

"OK," Collin said, and quicker than Donovan McNabb can fumble on the Eagle's 21 yard line, the round-faced youngster stacked and unstacked six, 3 3/4-inch-tall plastic cups.

"Three-point-two," said Beaumont, clocking Collin at what it takes a 1999 Ferrari Koenig F50 to go 0-to-60.

"Yea!" shouted Collin, jumping around with arms raised, much the way my 9-year-old son would if I actually lost my senses and brought home an Xbox game system.

Late-night debut
And to think we have Johnny Carson to thank.

On Nov. 2, 1990, Beaumont caught a segment of "The Tonight Show" featuring kids from Oceanside, Calif., stacking and unstacking cups with lightning speed. They showed Carson how to do it, and he and Doc Severinsen joined in a relay race.

Fascinated, Beaumont taped it and introduced his pupils to the sport.

"I did it as a one-day thing," said Beaumont, a soft-spoken, unflappable Charles Kuralt-type. His students were no dummies. The next day they asked to do it again, figuring that a few minutes playing with cups was better than a few minutes practicing subtraction.

"It became part of our day," Beaumont said. (I told you his students were no dummies.) "I use it as a management tool. If we're having a good day, maybe we get cups in."

Beaumont's students at Manheim Township's Reidenbaugh Elementary School were happy to give me a demonstration (until they realized I work for a newspaper and they weren't going to be on TV.)

"Hands flat on the table," instructed Beaumont. "Ready..." I asked Eryn McCoy, 6, what she's thinking right before her teacher says, "Go!" She couldn't think of anything.

"Go!"

Future fad
Each student grabbed a stack of six upside-down cups, built a pyramid with three cups on the bottom, two in the middle and one on top, then seized the top cup, collapsed it onto the lower five and ended by recreating a stack of six upside-down cups.

"I was really fast when I started, and I could beat everybody," one boy said, prompting derisive remarks from classmates. (The boy shall go unnamed.)

Don't try this at home with just any cup. Cup-stacking cups, sold by Speed Stacks Inc. of Englewood, Colo., have three holes in the bottom and slick, anti-stick interiors.

Company founder Bob Fox, a former gym teacher, expects about 800 competitors this April in the 2002 Seventh Annual Rocky Mountain Cup Stacking Championship. The tournament uses more challenging 12-cup stacking sequences than what I saw in Beaumont's class.

"It's a matter of time before sport stacking is an opportunity for kids all across the country," Fox told me.

The sport is catching on in Lancaster County like pacifism at the Gap VFW, but I did discover that Winnie Gerlach uses it in her gym class at Blue Ball Elementary.

"They're excited when I bring out the cups," she said. "It's great for hand-eye coordination."

Hmmm. Do you think Donovan McNabb could use a stack?"

www.speedstacks.com

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