Sixty-seven students from Salem gathered after school Thursday for 30 minutes of “sport stacking,” stacking cups in fast formations. The event was part of he World Sport Stacking Association’s annual effort to have hundreds of thousands of people gather to stack cups on a designated day.

“All around the world people were cup stacking at some point for a half hour,” said Salem sponsor Jennifer Lynch. “The goal this year was to have 250,000 people.”

The World Sport Stacking Association is still compiling the number of participants from Thursday’s event, so Salem’s students will not know until next week whether they were part of a record-breakering effort.

Lynch is one of the coaches for Salem’s sport stacking club, with kids in fourth and fifth grades meeting twice a month to stack cups in different formations. The club was started several years ago by a Salem physical education teacher.

Similar clubs exist at schools and churches around the country, and there are tournaments with teams competing to see who can build a series of stacks in specific formations at the fastest speed.

“It helps with left brain and right brain development and agility, it’s got a lot of depth to it,” Lynch said.

She said the club’s 12 members practice building different formations, and also play games and have relay races.

“My goal is to keep building the club so we can possibly compete,” Lynch said.