Participants in athletic events are encouraged to maintain fluid levels within their bodies by drinking water or other beverages at frequent intervals throughout the athletic event. In team sports such as baseball or softball, where each team alternately takes the field while most members of the opposing team remain in the dugout or on the bench, the members of each team have an opportunity to drink at regular intervals throughout a game. These beverages may be in the original cans or bottles supplied by the manufacturer, although for safety and sanitation reasons most playing fields do not permit metal or glass containers in areas reserved for players or for spectators. Partly because of these restrictions, reusable drink bottles have become popular with amateur athletic teams as well as spectators. These drink bottles typically include a beverage container made of a suitable plastic material and fitted with a removable screw-top lid for filling the container, which may have sufficient capacity to hold at least a quart of liquid. Extending through the lid is a drink straw, also usually made of plastic and equipped with a removable cap to keep the drink container closed at times when the user is not actually drinking from the straw.
Where each player on an athletic team has his or her own drinking cup, it can become difficult to maintain these cups in some semblance of order as the players of each team repeatedly leave the field and drink from their cups, and then put the cups aside upon returning to the field. The difficulty of keeping a number of players' drinking cups in some kind of orderly arrangement becomes especially acute with young players such as youth baseball or softball teams, where the natural tendency of children to confusion and mix-ups over which drinking cup belongs to what player only compounds the problems coaches or managers have in maintaining order as the teams leave the field and return to the dugout. This level of confusion can become even worse as the team members remove gloves or other articles of athletic gear each time they leave the field, and then sort through a jumbled pile of those articles the next time those team members return to the field. At the level of youth league playing, moreover, the "dugout" for each team typically comprises an assigned location along a chain-link fence at either side of home plate, so that drink cups and athletic gear must be placed on the Found and are subject to being knocked over or stepped on.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds