Don't get hung up on "14 years old". It's a classic journalist trop designed to get you to read their paper without putting too much weight on the actual content which is a paper thin, pun intended, PR fluff thing for The Society for Science. The prize is not even linked to the origami but on-site team challenges in a final event.

The origami is Miura-ori fold by the way and they are already used in plenty of fields. Fairly interesting stuff from the 60s. Would have made for a great article.

The kids tested some paper configurations and specific fold patterns. Really impressive stuff considering it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace. Neat science fair project, awful headline.