The Evolution of a Hockey Game

 With the onset of some hacking coughs we ended up staying home from church this Sunday. This isolation led to the birth of a new version of hockey some of us like to refer to as Tennis Hockey.

It all started when Isabel asked her dad “want to play air hockey with me?”

“Sure,” he said “how do you play?”

Isabel showed him her version played on the floor between two pillows. Using tennis balls, they hit the tennis ball “puck” into the other pillow to score a goal. After a little while of playing, JJ disappeared into the garage for a few minutes and returned with a 2x4 board with a goal sized hole cut out. A few more minutes and another one. He has a habit of taking a simple idea and bringing it to a whole new level- must be the Engineer in him. A problem of the boards tipping during play arose. Talk of making a solid frame was tossed around, one thing led to another, and pretty soon we were designing a fitted frame for our counter complete with sensors and automatic scoring. Like I said, a whole new level.

Here is the evolution of our Hockey Game

 This is Where Jordan was bambuzzled by his dad with the ole' "what's that over there?" trick!

Trying out the New Frame

While the kids were asleep, he finished the programming for the scoring. We even got mileage from this little  project by sticking a Happy Valentine's Day sign on the finished product. 

"Oh the cleverness of us!"

Trying it out before school

We still need to finish painting it since we ran out of spray paint, And there's a few other kinks to work out to make it a little faster. All in all, I'd say it's a fairly successful prototype of Isabel's idea and all from what we had lying around the house.  We are thinking of marketing it and selling it under the name  Table Tennis Hockey -- Catchy isn't it!