Girl’s ‘Helper’ aids rope jumpers
Three’s a crowd, unless kids want to jump rope.
But recruiting another spinner can prove more trouble than it’s worth.
Which is why 11-yearold Leah Thobe decided to bypass human assistance in creating the Jumper’s Helper, a device that rotates one end of a rope so two people can tackle a threeperson activity.
Made of five pieces of PVC pipe and a few clamps, the Jumper’s Helper’s simple design earned Thobe first place in her grade at the 2016 regional Invention Convention, held in May at Tolles Career & Technical Center in Plain City. The convention, established in 1993, marks the culmination of a yearlong
curriculum in Ohio schools that teaches problem-solving and entrepreneurship skills.
After the regional win, convention organizers urged Leah, a fifth- grader this school year at Heritage Elementary in Delaware, to make a video of the invention and submit it to “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.”
She joined a couple of other inventors from throughout the country on “Fallonventions,” a Sept. 6 spot with the late-night host.
Mrs. Thobe said her daughter didn’t quite know what she was getting into at first.
“She had never been up that late.”
After they taped a show for Leah to watch, the excitement kicked in.
“I smiled really big,” Leah said.
She didn’t miss a beat on the segment, jumping right into the rope that Fallon — and the Jumper’s Helper — spun for her. Leah and the two other young inventors presenting their ideas went home with $5,000 each.
To enter the competition, Leah and other students had to come up with three ideas. Besides the Jumper’s Helper, she imagined an air cast with an ice pack inside and a device to turn off lights. Leah couldn’t find any inventions similar to the Jumper’s Helper, so it topped the list.
Leah hit on the idea after she and her 9-year-old sister, Abbie, learned to jump
rope at the nearby YMCA.
A popular rhyme — “Cinderella dressed in yellow” — ends with players competing to get the most consecutive jumps without tangling themselves in the rope.
Without a third person to help — Thobe’s mother, Shelly, works in product development at Wendy’s and her father, Corey, is a mechanical engineer in the Air National Guard; older brother Blake Homan is a senior at Olentangy High School, and youngest sister, Elise, is 4 — they couldn’t practice the rhyme.
“They were getting upset because they couldn’t jump enough,” Mrs. Thobe said.
Before creating the Jumper’s Helper, Thobe tried tying the handle to a garbage can.
Trash spilled out after the can tipped because of the constant tugging on the rope — so a solution was in order.
Creativity seems to run in the family: Homan earned second place with his babybottle holder connected to a car seat when he participated in the Invention Convention, and Mrs. Thobe entered her own idea — a lollipop with a hand wipe attached — as a kid.
“It’s in the blood,” Mrs. Thobe said.
Early prototypes of the Jumper’s Helper featured a movable arm and an upright piece of pipe that fit the rope inside. But the arm swung too high, and the rope slid out of the PVC.
Her final design — in which the rope is attached to a PVC pipe with clips — won out. To add pizzazz, Leah wrapped her two helpers in shiny gold and purple duct tape.
Her parents weren’t initially sure that Leah’s idea would work.
“Our reaction was: ‘Seriously? How is that an invention?’” Mrs. Thobe recalled.
The finished product proved them wrong.
“When I saw it, I loved it,” she said. “The reason she made it this far is it’s for a kid, by a kid. It’s not solving a big problem or world peace, but it was pretty cool.”
Veronica Lynagh, executive director of the Ohio Invention League, a nonprofit responsible for the Invention Convention, thinks the relatability of Leah’s project set it apart.
“Even in the simple prototype, you look at it and say, ‘Why don’t we already have that?’” she said.
Talk shows such as “Ellen Degeneres” and “Tonight,” Lynagh said, call the Invention Convention every few months to ask about children who might be a good fit to appear.
She declined to take credit for the success of the young inventors.
“Creativity is not a learned skill; it’s an unlearned skill,” she said. “They were born creative geniuses.”