Crofton Student Sees How He 'Stacks Up' in Competition

Benjamin Meilinger, a student at Crofton Woods Elementary School, was one of the winners when students from six states converged on Feb. 5 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.

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 a 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 Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, 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  area, along with the mid-Atlantic regional tournament and the Maryland state tournament.

The competitors were from many different schools, including several in Anne Arundel County: Crofton Woods Elementary School, Deale Elementary School, Southern Middle School, Jacobsville Elementary School, Chesapeake Bay Middle School, Four  Seasons Elementary School and Oak Hill Elementary School. Other participating schools included Seneca Elementary School in Baltimore County, Tabernacle Learning Academy in Laurel, Centreville Elementary School and North Laurel Elementary in Delaware.

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

Students gathered information that indicates stacking can help people with their reading skills and studies confirm that the sport uses both hemispheres of the brain.

Schmid 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."

Winners from the event 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 in Crofton; and Sharon Hadder, North Laurel Elementary School in Delaware.

For more information about sport stacking, visit the website of the World Sport Stacking Association.