Lilee Nguyen's hands moved in a blur of motion. Cups were stacked and restacked until finally there were three columns of stacked cups. Lilee raised her arm in the air; she was the first one done, at 14.99 seconds.

Lilee, 10, is a fourth-grader at Washington Center Elementary School. She and the rest of the school participated in the World Sport Stacking Association's attempt to set a new Guinness World record Thursday.

They were trying to break the record set last year, 222,560, of the most people “sport stacking” at multiple locations in one day. Last year there were 1,343 schools and organizations involved in 50 U.S. states and 13 countries.

According to Washington Center physical education teacher Janell Petre, the sport promotes ambidexterity, right and left brain function, overall better performance in reflexes, and better performance in math and reading.

“I can tell just by watching kids stack who the better students are,” Petre said.

She says the faster they stack, the better they read. She also points to better ability at two-handed tasks like playing a musical instrument or using a computer keyboard.

There have been scientific studies done on the benefits of stacking, according to the speed-stacking Web site, speedstackers.com.

The sport has been around since the late 1980s, when physical education teacher Bob Fox started doing it in Southern California.

The sport took off, and Fox now has a company, Speed Stacks Inc., which promotes and makes the special cups for the sport.

The cups in Petre's gym class look like a typical plastic cup, but they have three holes in the bottom to allow air to circulate while stacking and slippery sides to aid in sliding into the other cups.

Petre spends three weeks with the students on Sports Stacking and has been doing it the past nine years.

“I get some funny looks when I tell parents their kids will be sitting on their bottoms stacking cups,” she said with a laugh. But she added it really does make them better athletes.

East Allen County Schools was also involved in trying to break the record; 500 students at Cedarville Elementary stacked cups from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Lilee Nguyen had two words to explain her speed and success at sports stacking: “I practice.”