Not ready to risk smashing your face into the pavement? Another unusual sport—cup stacking—may suit you better than extreme pogo. 

Watch Holly Berman-Carter at work. She can stack cups faster than almost anyone in the United States. In just a little over two seconds, she builds three stacks of three cups each and then dismantles them. That makes her a world-class sport stacker.

In sport stacking, contestants turn a small pile of cups into neat stacks. Then they tear down the stacks without letting any of the cups roll away. The goal? Complete all the stacks as fast as possible. Sometimes solo. Sometimes on teams.

“It’s the sport with the most high-fives and fistbumps that I’ve ever been a part of,” says Ms. Berman-Carter. “There’s not really anything else like it out there.”

She started sport stacking at five years old. Her mom saw sport stacking on TV and bought the family’s first set of cups.

“One day, she looked at me, and she goes, ‘You know, Holly, people go and compete and do this in competitions,’” Ms. Berman-Carter recalls. “‘Would you want to do that?’”

The answer: Yes. Young Holly jumped at the chance to practice with friends.

“It ended up being a great day,” she says. “I had so much fun. I did surprisingly well. And as we were driving home, my mom was like, ‘Would you want to do that again?’”

She did want to do it again—and again, and again. Eventually she was invited to join Team USA, representing her country in international competitions.

“We’ve been to countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, all because of sport stacking,” Ms. Berman-Carter says. “So it has been really the biggest blessing, and also such a surprise.”