Think bumper cars, but with bubbles instead of cars.
Hillsdale College students participated in a young sport called bubble soccer on Saturday, but most players were not focused on the soccer part of the game.
“Very few people are out there to actually play soccer,” sophomore Don McChesney said. “The majority of us are just there to deck the nearest person and watch him flip over.”
Participants in bubble soccer wear protective bubbles around their upper bodies that are approximately five feet in diameter and weigh about 25 pounds. The game is equivalent to soccer, but with the addition of the bubbles.
The protective bubbles allow participants to crash into each other without fear of major injury.
“You’ve got to protect your legs, but for the most part they protect you really well,” McChesney said. “I flipped all the way over a couple times but never took any real injuries.”
Campus Health and Recreation organized the event.
“We wanted a fun event to do inside in the winter,” said junior Rachael Hille, one of the student directors of Campus Health and Recreation.
The event lasted for five hours and more than 150 people participated, according to Hille.
“We saw something on Facebook, and there’s a really popular video on YouTube and we thought it looked really cool,” another student director of Campus Health and Recreation Jeffrey Meyers Jr. said. “We did some research and found out about Bubble Soccer Detroit and brought them in.”
The players focused primarily on scoring goals over the first few games of the day, but that quickly changed.
“It started out more soccer-like and then all of a sudden something happened where people got comfortable hitting each other, and it was just bumper cars ever since,” Hille said.
She noted that Campus Health and Recreation is willing to bring bubble soccer back to Hillsdale.
“They’ve thought about potentially buying some of the bubbles, so maybe having some intramural bubble soccer teams or using them for Greek week or dorm wars,” Hille said. “If it’s a success we’ll look into getting some for the college.”
“If we could get it back, I’d definitely do it again,” McChesney said.
