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Longmeadow children set world records

By Rick Sobey

Staff Intern



LONGMEADOW Two members of the community walk around every day with the ability to say, "We are the best in the world. Not one single person on earth can beat us."

These two individuals are 10- year-old Steven Purugganan and his 16-year-old brother Andrew Purugganan from Longmeadow. They have recently set one sport stacking record together, and Steven has accomplished breaking three sport stacking records on his own.

On Feb. 16 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships in Laurel, Del., Steven and Andrew made history as they worked together to break the sport stacking doubles world record in 7.84 seconds. Then, Steven, a fifth grader at Blueberry Hill Elementary School, became the fastest sport stacker on the planet by shattering three individual world records.

Steven had broken the world record last year at the World Championships in Denver, Colo. However, a sport stacker from Germany was able to defeat his record time in the months between the World Championships and this recent regional competition in Delaware. Now, Steven has grabbed the record back and hopes to retain it next month.

"We are going to Denver for the World Championships in April, and we will be face-to-face with the German sport stacker," Vicki Purugganan, mother of Steven and Andrew, said. "We think that it is going to be quite exciting with the German right there, and we hope that we still have the records when the competition is over."

Sport stacking is uncommon in Western Massachusetts, but Andrew, a sophomore at Longmeadow High School, discovered the hand-eye coordinated sport in 2006, and the brothers have practiced ever since.

"Andrew was watching ESPN two years ago when the World Sport Stacking Championships was shown, and he was very impressed," Vicki said. "He told his brother, and they have not stopped teaching themselves how to stack. They practice up to an hour every day."

After setting the world records in Delaware last month, the national media has included Steven and Andrew in a few events. NBC had a show called "The Top 100 of the Guiness Book of World Records" during Sunday night primetime programming, and there was a clip of the brothers sport stacking on the NBC show.

In addition, their videos of sport stacking have been watched numerous times by the public on the Web site www.youtube.com. The popular Web site invited the brothers to an event in New York City for highly viewed celebrities. In sport stacking, participants stack and unstack 12 specially designed high-tech cups in predetermined pyramids. They try to accomplish finishing the pyramid as fast as possible for individual times, and they also race head-to-head in team relays. Competitors can be penalized for a variety of actions, including putting the cups up or dismantling them down out of sequence.