TEXTILES.ORG
In an age when every play—and every injury—in a game can be replayed ad infinitum online, the need to protect an athlete’s privacy on the sidelines during a medical exam becomes more important than ever. Thanks to Kinematic Co.’s SidelinER® pop-up medical tent, athletes don’t have to keep their game face on for the world when talking with the docs.
Born out of a collaboration between the University of Alabama’s athletic and engineering departments, the product that eventually became the SidelinER tent was developed in just three months and was first used at a college football game in 2015.
The product has caught on, as the tent was the only sideline evaluation structure used by all professional and Division 1 football teams in the United States during the 2021–2022 season, the company says in its entry in the 2022 ATA International Achievement Awards (IAA). Due to that high demand, the company brought the soft-goods manufacturing in-house and purchased
an automated Gerber cutter to accelerate production.
Besides providing privacy, the tent creates a calm and controlled environment for medical exams—without the athlete having to be transported to the locker room. It comes in two versions, allowing for 48 to 65 square feet of space, and it can accommodate an exam table and three to six people in addition to the athlete.
The medical tent raises and lowers in five seconds and its panels can be custom branded, giving cash-strapped high school teams an avenue for sponsorship revenue. Schools of all sizes can use the tent as a backdrop for media coverage after games.
The Generation III version of the SidelinER PRO pop-up medical tent is 5 pounds lighter than its predecessor and 23% smaller when packed up.
The newest release by the company is a version for EMS and first responders called the FrontlinER™.