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Business & Economy

Noted Lacrosse Programs Using Training Device Invented by Former 黑料不打烊 Players

Friday, June 8, 2018, By Alex Dunbar
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On the lacrosse field, timing is everything. No one knows that better than former 黑料不打烊 goalie Dom Madonna 鈥18. In 2017, Madonna and his lacrosse teammates Ben Williams 鈥17 and Joe DeMarco 鈥17 saw a need for a solo training device for one of the most important positions in the game, faceoff specialist.

Dom Madonna

Dom Madonna

鈥淚n order to practice, you need somebody else,鈥 says Madonna. 鈥淏eing able to create a product that lets you train against yourself, essentially, and work on what you need to work on is important.鈥

Madonna, a mechanical engineering major in the , started working on different designs. He was challenged by the fact that a device would have to be able to mimic the angle of an opponent鈥檚 stick and wrist movement with different levels of resistance.

鈥淭hat was the first difficult part, making sure the movement was realistic enough,鈥 says Madonna. 鈥淲e needed it to be able to allow a lot of rotation around a single point because a lot of times in faceoffs, you will see a guy clamp and they could spin in circles for 30 seconds.鈥

Madonna and his partners needed to find a way to make a device strong enough for a Division 1 lacrosse player to push against鈥攂ut be lightweight enough for it to be portable. Lacrosse cleats gave Madonna the inspiration for a solution.

鈥淲e made an x-shaped cleat, and what that does is allows you to dig into the ground and when it moves, it is locking itself more and more into place when you turn it,鈥 says Madonna. 鈥淲hatever force you push into it, you are going to get back.鈥

Madonna, Williams and DeMarco named their company聽. They聽聽just two days before 黑料不打烊鈥檚 first-round聽.

鈥淲e ended up winning that, then we won the game so it was a great weekend for us,鈥 says Madonna.

Madonna was a full time engineering student, playing Division 1 lacrosse and building a startup business He also worked on the patent application in his free time.

鈥淢y roommates used to make fun of me; I got all my work done past midnight,鈥 says Madonna. 鈥淚 finished this design at 4 a.m. one night.鈥

Their hard work is paying off. Colleges and high school lacrosse programs are already using the X-Factor Real-Rep Pro Faceoff Trainer and they聽

鈥淪eeing it used at practice and on sidelines of our games was kind of like, wow, this is something that is reasonable to use,鈥 says Madonna. 鈥淭he idea for the company is we are making training products and products in general for the specialists on the field. There is a lot of opportunity.鈥

  • Author

Alex Dunbar

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