Inventor hopes Hoophitch a slam dunk

CLARKSTON – Sometimes two ingredients are all you need to cook up a good idea.

Paul Carey loves inventing. His wife and kids love basketball. Blending those loves has resulted in a traveling basketball backboard and hoop that Carey can put on his trailer hitch and take anywhere the family might travel.

Carey’s calling it a Hoophitch, and it’s something the 38-year-old middle school shop teacher has been cobbling together for the past two years. He came up with the idea one weekend when he and his wife, Lynn, were loading up the minivan to go camping.

“The kids asked if there would be a basketball court at the campground,” he said. “And I just said, ‘Why don’t I take all the gear off the car and rig up a basketball hoop to take with us.’ “

The children took him seriously.

So over the next few weeks he got to work welding backboards onto tubular steel, bolting together hinges and hitches, and tying on nets. Now, dozens of backboards, nets and hoops later, Carey thinks he’s 80 percent there to having the perfect portable Hoophitch.

Hoopfest attendees can see the invention in action this weekend. Carey plans to bring it so his boys can warm up before their games and so sports enthusiasts and maybe some sporting companies can look it over.

“Of all the ideas he’s had, this is really the best,” said Lynn Carey, a schoolteacher who played on the UI women’s basketball team and now coaches youth teams in Clarkston. A good number of her husband’s ideas would work, but there have been plenty “that you throw back and try again,” she said.

One of Carey’s first creations came when he was a student at the University of Idaho nearly 18 years ago. He welded together a wheelbarrow assembly to use for transporting personal watercraft from the water to the trailer. While a major personal watercraft manufacturer was interested in the idea, the company decided it didn’t want to deal with the dangers of someone dropping the ski. “I learned a lot about product liability on that one,” said Carey.

The youngest of nine children, Carey has always been independent and imaginative, and is always tweaking and altering things, said his family. After he and Lynn started their family, he came up with an idea to modify their bicycle child trailer by adding a handle from a lawn chair frame and a third wheel, converting it into a large jogging stroller.

“We were doing a lot of roller-blading then and we needed something like that,” said Carey.

Also, there wasn’t enough room in the garage for both the trailer and a new stroller, so it was nice to have something that did both, said Lynn Carey. “Some of his ideas are truly great,” she said.

One of the trailer makers agreed and bought the rights to produce and sell Carey’s idea as a conversion kit.

This year, he sold a Hoophitch-type idea to Wilson Sporting Goods, but instead of a basketball hoop, the hitch holds a post and tennis net. The other end of the Hitchnet can be connected to another trailer hitch or another sturdy object that might serve as a second post. Under the agreement, the company makes the equipment and handles the product liability, and Carey gets a royalty for every one sold.

Now he’s hoping to find a similar company to bring Hoophitch to fruition. With the engineering help of friend Brian Denton, Carey has already made three versions; one that cranks up, one that folds and one that swings away so you can open the back of your SUV. He also has designed one with a spiderweb-like net behind it to protect the vehicle.

When he’s not inventing or teaching school, he’s encouraging others to tap into their own creativity. This summer, Carey is teaching a summer camp class for young inventors.

But this weekend, Carey and his family expect to be parked in a hotel lot somewhere on the north side of the Spokane River close to the thick of the Hoopfest activities. His children, Nick, 13, Mitch, 11, and Kristin, 8, will likely be using the Hoophitch, he said.

If he can find a manufacturer for his invention, Carey thinks the contraption would retail for about $350. Even so, whatever royalties he may earn on this or his other creations will never cover his expenses, which includes the costs for a cluttered workshop away from his home property, he said.

He does it for the thrill of making something that works and that people would want, he said. “I’m sure not doing this for the money.”

While his boys compete in Hoopfest, Carey will be following his own bliss. “This is giving a whole new meaning to the term Sport Utility Vehicle,” he said. “I want to show it off.”