While working for the Boys & Girls Club of Oceanside, California, in 1981, Wayne Godinet came up with the idea for sport stacking.

When the children he was working with were tired of playing traditional sports, he took paper cups and asked them to stack them as fast as possible.

One of the national champions was Matt Adame, a member of Godinet's club, the "Professional Cupstack Drill Team".

[1][4][5] After the sport received national attention on The Tonight Show, Bob Fox, a physical education teacher from Colorado, introduced stacking to his students.

In 1998, Fox, together with Larry Goers, created a line of proprietary sport stacking products including the patented timing system known as the StackMat.

[7][8] In 2001 Fox founded the World Cup Stacking Association (WCSA) to formalize the sport's rules and sanction competitions worldwide.

[11][12] Official sport stacking cups are specially designed to prevent sticking and to allow the competitor to go faster.

Special weighted training cups, called "Super Stacks," are made from metal and are most commonly used directly before competing.

Their scientific poster on that topic got awarded by the AAHPERD[16][17] On the other hand, Hart couldn't get the same results as Udermann when studying improvement on reaction time.

[18] Researchers at the State University of New York studied the effects on the reaction time and confirmed Udermann rather than Hart, stating, "that the results agreed with the claims made by Speed Stacks, in which practicing cup stacking can improve reaction time.

The global record for "Most People Sport Stacking at Multiple Locations", recognized by the WSSA, stands at 746,698 students representing 2,242 schools and organizations.