Tackling problems in football training
A former football player and a youth coach, Todd Shingleton of Brady Township always hated the blocking sleds used in practice, which led to his sporting invention.
The stationary sleds are pushed across the practice field by a group of six or seven players, usually beefy linemen, as a strength-building exercise.
"Those sleds don't teach anybody anything," said Shingleton, who decided to correct the problem by creating his own football training apparatus.
Shingleton, who also works for Westinghouse Technologies, patented the Blocking and Tackling Eliminator in 1999. He also acquired another patent on an even more ambitious football apparatus, which he calls the Competition Eliminator.
The BT Eliminator is arranged with a steel frame in the shape of a "T," from which a pair of blocking bags hangs. The bags are free to move when pushed so when two people are lining up against each other, they are pushing against each other's force.
Shock absorbers can be added to increase the resistance, making the BT Eliminator suitable for all levels, said Shingleton.
He said competition is the defining aspect of the BT Eliminator. It is electrically wired and has three panels on each player's side that will light up if the player wins one of the competing categories.
"It is a football player's lie detector test," said Shingleton.
There is a light for the first player to hit the bag, a light for the player with the strength who lifts the bag up and one for the player who turns the bag around on the other guy.
A winner would take two of the three categories.
Shingleton said the existing sled spurred no incentive to hit the sled first, and it was impossible to decipher who was pushing the hardest. There were also no individual matchups between players.
"With the conventional sled, you have young kids using the same sled used by high school and colleges. It doesn't seem fair, does it?"
Shingleton, who also owns Playthings Etc., a toy shop on Route 8 in Clay Township that's a building made of metal and fashioned after a stealth spacecraft, said he has invested $50,000 into the project. He has several working steel prototypes, which he had built by BioFab, a company in East Brady that specializes in metalwork.
He did all the electronics work himself, wandering into a Radio Shack one day and going from there.
His other design is the Competition Eliminator, which employs up to 11 blocking bags — a full defense — so that the offense can run plays against it.He said this device is important for teams that don't have the luxury of first and second teams to run plays against.He said presently the BTEliminator could be brought to market, but he will wait until he works out the kinks in the Competition Eliminator. Then the two would come out at the same time. Another patent is probably in the works too, he said."The (Competition Eliminator's) newer version would accommodate a wider variety of blocking techniques," said Shingleton, who declined to elaborate more specifically because of patent concerns.Shingleton said he has tested the BT Eliminator at the college and high school level. It saw time at Slippery Rock University, where a bunch of "knuckle draggers" knocked the device all over the field.But more important to Shingleton was the initial reaction to it, when it was first unveiled one night at a Slippery Rock youth football league practice.He said the children enjoyed the BT Eliminator so much their parents had to pool their car headlights together to keep the field lit."Just seeing the kids reaction was worth it for me," said Shingleton.He said he plans on marketing it to high schools and colleges throughout the country."I could have sold one but I don't want to send out what Ihave now and end up getting an Edsel," said Shingleton.
