25 February 2008
Technology and Innovation Make Sports Safe and Accessible
Eco-friendly equipment helps sports enthusiasts “go green”
Participating in sports and physical activity has been an important part of the American lifestyle for more than a century. During that period, sports equipment and the games themselves have evolved and improved immeasurably. But Americans are not resting on their laurels; they continue to find ways to make equipment and games better, safer, more environmentally friendly and more engaging to their devotees.
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Playing into the Future
By Mike Vogel
Ingenuity in sports extends beyond technology and equipment to the games themselves. A handful of new hybrid, or "aesthetic," sports are beginning to make inroads into the sporting landscape.
Rutgers University graduate student Tom Russotti developed "Wiffle Hurling" as a softer variation on hurling, Ireland's fast-paced and violent national sport. Using soccer goals, hollow plastic bats, and white plastic balls with holes in them — the equipment used to play Wiffleball — Russotti invented Wiffle Hurling when he was told that the original game was too violent for the uninitiated.
Russotti heats the bats over a flame to flatten them, approximating the shape of the original hurling equipment. His adjustment to hurling's original equipment enables Whiffle Hurling to retain the intensity of hurling while making the game safer for new players.
Texan Eric Heiberg invented Mojo Kickball as an outlet for exercise. The game only vaguely resembles kickball, a combination of baseball and soccer played in many U.S. school gym classes, and also contains elements of dodgeball, another staple of gym classes. Mojo Kickball employs six balls, pitchers throw balls at their own team, and players score on third base.
Street bicycle polo has made a footprint in several American cities recently, and it differs from the other aesthetics in that a greater degree of physical dexterity is required. In this sport, players must be able to maintain their balance on their bikes while opponents come at them wielding polo mallets and vying for a field hockey ball.
Head Tech
Within the last 20 years, the term "concussion" has crept its way into the sports vernacular at all levels. Retired players in contact sports such as football and hockey speak of playing through "headaches" during their playing days, not realizing the severity of what might have actually been undiagnosed concussions.
Advancements in protective gear could help alleviate such concerns for the athletes of today. Riddell Sports Group, an Illinois-based manufacturer of sports equipment, has designed a line of football helmets rigged with sensors that can measure the severity of impacts and help detect possible concussions.
Equipped with Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS) technology, each helmet has six accelerometers in its lining. Developed by Simbex, LLC, a New Hamphsire-based company, these sensors measure the location, magnitude, duration, and direction of the impact. The data are transmitted continuously and wirelessly to a waterproof sideline computer monitored by team medical staff. Staff can monitor the data on an ongoing basis, but a pager alert is sent whenever one of the helmets registers a collision whose severity exceeds a certain predetermined limit.
At that point, the profile of the affected player can be called up on the computer screen, and team staff can see instantly the impact history of that player from previous practices and games.
Prior to the start of the season, each player is given a 25-minute computer-based test that determines his baseline brain behavior. If the sensory system alerts the medical staff to a possible head injury, the staff will give the test again and compare the results to the player's baseline.
Gear Goes Green
Nearly 40 years after Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970, consumers have more environmentally sound choices available to them in almost every area of the marketplace. One of the more recent additions to the greening of consumer products is the sporting goods and fitness segment.
Because many surfboards have been coated with polyester resins that are harmful to the environment and the workers who handle them, some manufacturers have recently developed epoxy resins and natural composites. Not only are they more environmentally friendly, they resist bumps and scrapes better than the polyester-coated versions.
Footballs, soccer balls, and other high-end sports balls are traditionally made with a rubber inner air bladder and covered with polyurethane or synthetic leather. But continued and repeated harvesting of rubber can diminish forests. Seattle-based Fair Trade Sports manufactures balls that have inner bladders and outer coatings that meet Forest Steward Council (FSC) standards. The FSC certification ensures that the rubber comes from a responsibly managed forest, as mandated by international rules.
Millions of kids are skateboarders, and most serious boarders break at least one board a year. Instead of using wood, skateboard makers such as Comet, Habitat, Loaded Boards, and Sector 9 have started producing green boards made from bamboo or hemp fiberglass. Many boarders find the new eco-friendly models to be better performing, stronger, and more flexible.
Calfee Design is also using hemp and bamboo to make eco-friendly bicycles. The company has made high-end racing bikes from carbon fiber for the last two decades, but began to make the bamboo bikes about a decade ago. The bamboo models weigh slightly more than the carbon-fiber vehicles, but they can be better at absorbing road impact and vibrations.
As long as performance and durability aren't sacrificed, consumers seem willing to embrace equipment that is derived from ecologically friendly materials.
(This is an excerpt from an article published in the eJournalUSA The Next New Thing.)
Mike Vogel is a writer and editor who has previously published on the subjects of hockey, baseball, food, and music. He lives in Maryland.
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