I had my first child in September of 2004.   As a new mom I was always concerned about my daughter getting sick or putting dirty things in her mouth that have fallen to the floor.  I was constantly cleaning everything she came into contact with and got so upset when her things would hit the dirty floor.  I first wanted to find a cute shopping cart cover to keep her from touching the dirty shopping carts in grocery stores.  After some time I couldn’t find one that was cute so I bought a pattern on ebay and began sewing.  Now, I’ve never sewn anything in my life so I was a little rusty in the beginning but as I kept trying I become better and found that I really liked sewing.  After our incident in the American girl doll store (read below) my husband and I were determined to find a product that would secure our daughter’s blanket.  Well, after months of searching we decided to try to make it ourselves.  After many, many prototypes we finally came up with a design that we were happy with.  I made a few dozen of them to give out to family and friends, I even gave a few to moms in the mall or grocery store who had a child with a sippy cup.  As word started to spread about my product more and more people were asking for one.  At that point my husband and I knew that we were onto something.  Since then I have grown a handmade product into a business.  Every person who buys the Clingy Cord raves about how great it is.  I am very proud of my invention and want to see my business succeed.

I was a Division 1 softball Coach at Oklahoma State University for 23 years. We had 900 wins and made 6 trips to the Women’s College World Series during that time. Often times we would send our players home over the summer with workouts and they would sometimes come back with some bad habits from tee hitting. It became mundane and their focus waned. I often wondered how to improve the situation. After I retired I maintained an interest in helping kids get better. One day it occurred to me that by stacking balls on a tee you could achieve several things. One, you could provide several different planes for hitters to hit through. But more importantly, a hitter would really have to focus on hitting through the top ball cleanly in order to keep the bottom ball from falling. This cre4ated more line drives and fewer weak ground balls and pop ups. When tested with younger players, they were frustrated at first until they had success. Once they did, they gained tremendous confidence and began challenging each other at practice. Then, I asked a current Division 1 one coach to test the theory with his team for 6 months using our prototypes before we went to market. He did so and was really sold on it, as were his players. To this day they leave the tee stackers attached to all of their tees so the players can use them at will. That was 31/2 years ago. They also saved time as fewer swings are required because they are quality swings, not quantity. Today, many high schools and colleges use the Stackers.

They work well for both softball and baseball and for run and slap lefty hitters wanting to work on line drives through the infield. However, in your hitting theory is to “hit hard and down though the ball” instead of getting on plane through the ball at contact, then the stackers will only help you by providing different planes to hit through. Either way, it still provides more fun and challenge while learning great hitting skills.