Bubble soccer catching on in Winnipeg

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This article was published 06/06/2015 (4013 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Next week, Brian Biebrich’s teenage granddaughter will be a flag bearer at a 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup match at Investors Group Field.

Biebrich plans to attend the Group D clash, but first, the chiseled 56-year-old had a “beautiful game” of his own to get through.

Oh, did we mention? Biebrich’s contest involved racing willy-nilly around a pitch with a 12-kilogram plastic orb strapped around his body.

Two Saturdays ago, a new company called River City Bubble Ball staged an event to promote the fast-growing game of bubble soccer. The object of bubble soccer is twofold: 1) to pot as many goals as possible while 2) hurtling yourself into opponents like a human wrecking ball, using your fully-inflated body-suit as a battering ram.

Anybody interested in giving the, er, sport a shot was welcome to suit up. The moment Biebrich read about the event on Facebook he figured, “Hey, why the heck not?”

A few minutes after the opening kickoff, Biebrich was back on the sidelines, huffing, puffing and grinning from ear to ear.

“That was awesome,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the grass in a park near Harold Hatcher Elementary School. “I was a bit tentative (to hit somebody) at the start, but once I got that first collision out of the way and realized I was OK and nothing was broken, I went looking for somebody else to smash into.”

Like Biebrich, Sarah Hewey noticed the blurb for the pick-up game online. Hewey is the soccer convenor at Oxford Heights Community Club. She was curious to see if bubble soccer was something her young charges might be interested in.

“Never mind getting them in (the bubbles); now that I’ve tried it myself, I think the bigger problem would be coaxing them back out,” Hewey announced, mentioning she managed to score two goals “not that I was counting or anything.”

 

Bubble soccer — or zorb football, as it’s properly termed — was invented four years ago for a Norwegian television show called Golden Goal. The hard-knock game was quickly embraced by soccer-mad England and has since caught on in cities and countries all over the globe, including Winnipeg, where at least four separate outfits now rent out equipment for birthdays, office get-togethers and bachelor/bachelorette parties.

Neil Trudeau runs River City Bubble Ball. Trudeau had never heard of bubble soccer until he spotted combatants in action on YouTube last September. After doing a bit of digging, he told his fiancée, Christiana Gehrer, the activity might be worth pursuing as a business opportunity. In March, the couple became the proud owners of 36 Chinese-made “bubble-balls,” of various sizes and dimensions.

“After the bubbles arrived, we held a few games with friends and family to get a feel for how it all worked,” Trudeau says, noting his gear fits children as short as three-foot-11 and adults as tall as six-foot-10. “Like (Biebrich) said, you’re a bit apprehensive at the beginning, but after a couple of minutes, it’s all good. The biggest thing I find is figuring out how to run. The bubbles only go as far as your waist but your stride is still impacted, somewhat, so there’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to manoeuvring your legs properly.” (Each bubble extends about 30 centimetres above the wearer’s head to guard against neck injuries; a pair of hand grips is positioned at chest level to reduce being jostled about.)

Trudeau and Gehrer hosted their first official bubble-soccer game on May 18, a day that saw the temperature in Winnipeg dip below zero, coupled with a dusting of snow.

“It was for a 10-year-old’s birthday party and the lady who booked us didn’t want to reschedule because there was something like 24 kids coming,” Gehrer says. “The field we were at basically turned into this huge mud bog. The kids had an absolute blast getting dirty but after we got home, we had to blow all the bubbles back up and spend close to four hours hosing each one down.” (Trudeau arrives at events a good two hours early, which allows him enough time to inflate each bubble individually, using an air pump connected to the battery of his 4X4.)

Because bubble soccer can also be played indoors on a basketball court or on artificial turf, Trudeau has approached several school divisions, hoping to have the game added to their physical education curriculums.

“I know it doesn’t look like a very serious game but it’s a really good workout,” Trudeau says. “People who rent us for an hour sometimes think that won’t be long enough, but after 10 minutes of running around and bumping into one another, they’re usually more than ready to take a shift off.”

John Radosta is the commissioner of the National Association of Bubble Soccer (NABS), a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based organization that manufactures and distributes bubble-soccer equipment. The NABS also offers support to budding entrepreneurs such as Trudeau and Gehrer, and to individuals trying to organize bubble-soccer leagues in their community.

“We’ve been around for about 17 months now and we literally can’t keep up with the current demand,” Radosta says when reached on the phone at his office in Florida. “We just signed our 37th affiliate; so far Toronto and Halifax are our only Canadian cities but we have also had a few inquiries from Quebec and at least one from Winnipeg.”

Radosta says his website (www.nationalbubblesoccer.com) receives as many as 15,000 hits a month. Online searches for “bubble soccer” in general are approaching 85,000 per month in the United States alone, he adds.

“The numbers for bubble soccer have been climbing exponentially and what we’ve seen from our analytics is that it seems to appeal primarily to young professionals between the ages of 25 and 40.”

Thing is, bubble soccer ain’t cheap; officially authorized bubbles cost between $280 and $380 each, Radosta notes, so there is a significant investment involved if somebody wants to kick-start a league in his or her city.

“You can get cheaper balls if you go outside North America but the good thing about our product is it’s made from a high-quality resin called thermoplastic that ‘breathes.’ So whether you’re playing in 90-degree (Fahrenheit) heat in Florida or in 20 degrees in Minnesota, our equipment is meant to stand up to both types of environments.”

This fall, Radosta is hoping to present the world’s inaugural Bubble Bowl — a championship tilt that will pit teams from leagues such as Cleveland Bubble Soccer, Motor City Bubble Soccer and Bubble Ball Texas against one another.

“A number of news agencies, including ESPN, have expressed interest in covering the event, so it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together,” Radosta says, mentioning Las Vegas as a potential host city.

That said, Radosta doesn’t foresee a day when bubble soccer will become a professional sport.

“Maybe my vision isn’t long enough, but no, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. It’s a fun sport for sure but it’s more of a social sport, like co-ed softball. The majority of the people who play it are the type who like to head out for a couple of beers afterwards and share a few laughs with their buddies, bragging about who hit who the hardest.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca