STACKING UP AWARDS: Winterville girl named to USA Junior Olympic Speed Stacking team
WINTERVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - Most of us haven’t really been stacking our schedules for the last year or so.
Life has turned upside down since the pandemic and forced us inside. Eleven-year-old Jayla Brothers from Winterville has been stacking her schedule.
“I could practice instead of three hours, five hours,” she said. The pandemic has given her more time to practice cup stacking.
She’s a champion and recently named to the USA Junior Olympics for Speed Stacking. This is something she has been doing for less than two years.
“My PE teacher had brought them out and she was teaching us,” Brothers said. “And I was like, oh, maybe this could be cool. So my parents had bought me a set and ever since then, I’ve been going.”
All she needs are some cups -- and a timer to try to beat her previous records.
“You learn hand-eye coordination and it makes you focus on one thing,” Brothers said. “Like you’re just stacking cups. One thing. Instead of multiple tasks at one time.”
It is certainly a noisy hobby, but the noise has been worth it for both Jayla and her mom, Tawanda, who enjoys watching her daughter find such a passion in speed stacking.
“It is worth every bit of the noise just to see her improvement, just to see her competitiveness,” Tawanda said. “It actually even helps her social skills as she’s competing against other cup stackers.”
The success travels as fast as Jayla can stack cups. This has caught the attention of the teacher who first introduced this to her -- a year and a half ago when she was a fourth-grader in Florida.
“Jayla, I am so super proud of you!” said Lisa Di Leo Mercer. “You’re an amazing girl and I’m just so happy that you have found something that you love and that you are just reaching and soaring to the sky and I’m so proud of you!”
The next competition is in Texas, but she has done some virtually during the pandemic.
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