Footage of Happy Hollow fifth graders playing on our invention during our visit in mid December. A great experience for both us and the kids! The students gave us good feedback and helpful constructive criticism.
Our process began with the primary question of how to further improve our basketball skills around the hoop, for shooting both in the post and off of the glass. We started off with the idea of creating a singular hoop that had multiple obstacles attached to the backboard to improve bank shots, and how to put the correct spin on the ball when in the paint of the basketball court. Celtics player Kyrie Irving played on a broken backboard as a kid, making him good at layups which was our goal with this hoop. We tested it out ourselves and with other players in the field house, but the immediate reaction was not very positive, so we decided to move on to other ideas.
We know that the more time you spend practicing a skill, the better you get at it. In order to get younger players to spend more time with basketball, we decided to try to make the playground spaces at elementary and middle schools more enjoyable for recess time for the students. One of the problems on school playgrounds is that many kids need to use the equipment at once. We thought that having multiple hoops on a single support structure would allow more kids to play. We came up with a bunch of ideas for different games you could play on the hoop. For example around the world with maps of the world so would learn your countries as you play basketball. Another idea we came up with was knockout on all the hoops where you had to beat your opponent around all the hoops to get him out instead of just one hoop.
After building our prototype, we were unsure of what the future held for our invention, we took it out to the real world at a local elementary school and tested it out. Here, we allowed the students to play games that were pre-existing, along with letting them create their own games to gain more feedback. The students loved it. This gave us confidence that the Quad Hoop has a bright future.
For the future, we would create a fully functional quad hoop with regulation size basketball hoops with the same mechanical technology for the spinning cylinder at the top. However, we would add a few modifications based on the feedback from the elementary school visit, such as bringing life to the hoop with color and decorations, and adding more smaller hoops at the top portion of the structure and in the middle section (to make it easier for the little kids). This fully functional Quad Hoop will be made in the smaller scale, or Nerf™-size model for indoor use, and will also be made with regulation-size hoops for outdoor use.
The Quad Hoop is a four way basketball hoop with a special-feature rotating basket on top that dispenses the ball in a random direction. It is used by basketball lovers and those who have limited space to play the game they love. The Quad Hoop’s unique design and especially the spinning top draws people's attention and creates so many more game opportunities such as around the world and unique knockout. It also has a great geographic game that has mats of all seven continents to give players an educational experience, while having fun. With this around the world game players get the best of both worlds with an athletic atmosphere, along with an opportunity to learn.