Innovation Project Summary

This year we were challenged to discover a way of sharing our favorite hobbies with more people.

 At the beginning of the season, we shared our hobbies and interests with each other.  We narrowed our list of hobbies to video games, Lego, playing with clay, creating stop motion movies, playing ice hockey and destroying stuff!  The team voted on these hobbies and decided to research Ice Hockey.

We ran a survey to understand what impediments people found to practice ice hockey. We reviewed survey responses from over 70 people.  The survey results indicated that lack of physical ability was one of the biggest impediments for our sample of people to practice ice hockey.  We decided to research more about this topic.

We Interviewed two professional hockey players and coaches: Mariah Fujimagari and Stan Neckar (Nekash). We also interviewed a community hockey developer manager from Vinik Sports: Jordan McKenzie and read both physical books and articles on the internet.

The interviews and research led us to find out about Sled Hockey. This adaptive form of Ice Hockey provides access to physically disabled and non-disabled people. We decided to learn more about sled hockey.

To learn more about sled hockey we interviewed Coach Gloria Smith. Coach Gloria leads the Tampa Bay Lightning sled hockey team. She showed us the equipment used for sled hockey and even let us try it out! Coach Gloria also told us that the biggest challenge she found for people to practice sled hockey was that people don’t know about this sport. We decided to help coach Gloria by creating ways to spread the word about this sport!

Since the problem we identified about sled hockey is the lack of awareness about this adaptive sport, we came up with a two-part solution.

First, we built prototypes that simulate the game of sled hockey. These devices are portable and easy to bring over to different locations and events like fairs and expos.  The idea is to let people in the community try these prototypes so that they get to experiment the look and feel of sled hockey without having to go to the ice rink.

The second part of our solution is a series of videos about sled hockey. We created one video to explain what sled hockey is and to explain how to use the prototypes and one Lego stop motion video to get the attention of kids and adults.

We shared the videos with the experts we interviewed at the beginning of our season. We also ran an event at the Starkey Library where we invited Geoffrey Diaz, a disabled expert. We incorporated feedback from the experts and from the event at the library to improve our prototypes, videos and presentation style. After we improved our solution we met with Coach Gloria and her team again and they gave us the following feedback:

• Make it easier to customize
• Change the angle of the stick to make it easier to move and hit the puck
• Add straps and a footrest
• Put the wheels in a row down the middle.

One of the most exciting moments for us this season was when one of the disabled hockey players, Anna-Sophia, tried our prototypes.  Her father was very excited to see her on it and he said he wanted to build one for her so that she could practice her skills at home. The ultimate purpose of our solution is to have a low-cost set of rolling sleds and videos that coach Gloria, or anybody else, can easily use at different locations to increase community awareness about sled hockey. We want the community to know that this sport is great for:

• Increased upper body strength, core control, coordination, and balance
• Reduced stress and anxiety
• Improved alertness, concentration, and overall cognitive function
• Increased opportunities for siblings and other family members to play together
• Increased sense of independence

Please help us spread the word about sled hockey by sharing our website and videos!!!