Lacrosse is a physically demanding sport under the best conditions, but inclement weather adds frozen hands to the mix. Samantha Wolfe had enough of it and, as a 14-year-old freshman, thought, “why not make a heated stick?” Three years later, her idea has become a reality — the FingerFire lacrosse stick[1] — and is being tested right now by teams in colder climes.
Wolfe goes to school in New York, and explained the rather self-evident problem when I visited her booth at CES.
“It gets so cold that even with gloves, your fingers get numb,” she said. She told her dad (who was also at the booth) at the time, why don’t they make sticks that warm your hands? It would sure make the games a lot more bearable.
Seems logical. But searching found no such thing, and eventually the Wolfes decided to take matters into their own hands, so to speak. They worked with a product design house Enventys Partners to do the engineering and prototyping, and it ended up being a two-year process to make the thing.
“It took us about ten months just to test different heating methodologies and looking at the tradeoffs among weight, heat and duration,” Wolfe explained, writing on the FingerFire site.
All self-funded, of course. VC firms don’t take a lot of meetings from high school kids.
Eventually they arrived at the current version, which keeps two hand-size sections of the stick at a steady 100 degrees F for an hour and a half before needing a recharge via USB. It’s been tested for durability and safety (can’t have sticks blowing up mid-game) and for the ideal temperature (earlier versions weren’t hot enough).
I tried it and, while it...