Feb 21, 2017Water from the Sky
Hydrating an entire team during a game is a critical aspect of keeping players healthy and performing at their best. When students in the Design, Thinking, Engineering, and Innovation class at La Jolla Country Day School in San Diego studied the issue earlier this year, they saw an opportunity to approach it in a new way.
“Everything is focused on hydrating the players on the sidelines,” says Matt Abbondanzio, MFA, Director of Design and Innovation at La Jolla. “However, through conversations with football players, for example, we discovered that there wasn’t enough time between downs for the athletes on the field to get to the sidelines, take a drink, and be back for the next play. As a result, they were running the biggest risk for dehydration. Athletes from other sports expressed similar concerns, so our goal was to figure out how to address this issue.”
The solution involved mounting a water bottle on a drone and attaching a clipped hose to it that players could drink from. Called the “Hydrone,” it was created last year by three students in Abbondanzio’s class who were working to improve team hydration through a partnership with CamelBak, an outdoor equipment company known for its hydration projects.
We wanted to come up with a low-cost prototype that addressed the problems with team hydration
