Teens solve sporting injury woes
It’s the kind of product that really should exist but didn’t, so a group of Christchurch teenagers challenged themselves to make it a reality.
Pivot tape combines two sporting necessities – strapping tape and ice packs – to form an instant ice-cold sports strapping tape that the teenagers say will enable athletes to recover faster than ever.
The idea, born on the sideline of a sports field, took about a year of troubleshooting and trial and error before the Cashmere High School students launched it on their website and started distributing to a handful of sports stores.
It won Luisa Birkenhake, Josh Dalley, Wayo Whyte and Riley Flanagan the Company of the Year award at the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) national competition, beating more than 1000 ideas in a Dragons’ Den style showdown.
White said the idea for the product stemmed from a problem they had ‘‘all faced’’ as keen athletes. Ice packs and strapping tape ‘‘just don’t mix well’’ and ‘‘no-one likes sitting on the sidelines’’ while their teammates play, he said.
With this in mind, the students approached their school’s chemistry department to create a tape embedded with a chemical that went cold when drenched with water.
Their product combined the support of strapping tape with the cooling of an ice pack, allowing the user to recover faster while avoiding the immobility caused by an ice pack.
Hockey player Birkenhake, 17, who plans to study physiotherapy next year, said she hoped learning more about the industry would help the team refine the product further and find innovative new uses for it.
Broken fingers and toes could be tricky to ice so she thought the tape could eventually be used in a medical setting, or be used to soothe joint and arthritis pain, she said.
An equivalent heating tape could be developed for other uses.
Surfer Dalley, 18, said despite the creators going their separate ways for university, they hoped to continue growing the brand and saw ‘‘no reason why we couldn’t have a stall in major stores like Rebel Sport for athletes to easily access’’.
The enterprise scheme, in its 38th year, is a programme designed for year 12 and 13 students to set up and run their own company.