UO product design students captured the top two spots at QuackCon, the country's first collegiate sports and technology hackathon competition that synthesized engineering, programming, and athletics to create innovative sports product designs in a 36-hour blitz.

A team from the inaugural class of the new Sports Product Design Program, in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, won first place. Their prototype chest-band device, Shadow Trainer, would provide real-time visual pacing data for runners. Team members Alex Hill, Drew McGrath, Garrett Tollette, Kodi Whitfield, and Jacob Winkler shared the first-place $2,500 prize.

A team of UO undergraduate students placed second with Wing Snap, a mechanism that allows track athletes to easily switch between cleats and street shoes. Their second-place win included a $1,250 prize shared by product design undergraduates Nick Cantrell, Josh Lyman, Tin Le, Lauren Emick, and general science major Alex Netto, vice president of finance in the UO's Entrepreneurship Club.

Teams from 14 universities in nine states in the US and Canada participated in the competition, including from Princeton, the University of Texas at Austin, North Carolina University, Drexel University, and elsewhere.

QuackCon was organized by the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship at the Lundquist College of Business, in collaboration with the UO computer science student group HackTownUSA, the UO Entrepreneurship Club, and University Innovation Fellows. Generous financial support for the event was provide by UO alumni Dr. Richard and Allison Sudek. Global design company IDEO and hackathon sanction organization Major League Hacking provided additional resources.