 Bubblesocker, yep, bubblesocker. And here I thought I was making my NBA debut, well it's probably for the best. This looks like it'll be a little bit more my speed. Every Sunday from 3 to 6, 18 teams or roughly 200 BU students come out to FitRec and play. Despite the fact that students filled the sign up sheet to capacity in just over an hour, I still wasn't quite sure what it was. Bubblesocker is a fairly new sport and people wear literally a bubble around them. So they'll have a big sphere that's inflated with air, it's made of PVC, clear see-through plastic and you play soccer 4 on 4 while you're wearing this bubble and you bounce off other people, you bounce off the floor, you bounce off the walls and it's a little bit more contact oriented than regular soccer but it's a little safer because you have a big bubble around you so it's a pretty fun game. And lots of contact there was, I mean lots and lots and lots and lots of contact. People just kept pinballing into one another and well then there was this, ouch. Most BU Bubblesocker players are former football players but as you can see from all the hits they're taking, this more closely resembles American football. Trust me though, nobody's getting concussions in these. And naturally, as with all sports, there is a limit to what you can do. In terms of like contact, just if you're going to hit someone, you have to make sure that they can see you so you can't like come up behind someone and just like nail them. Also, you can't like push people into the boards because we don't want the bubbles to pop. So armed with some game knowledge and some safety reassurance, it was time for my Bubblesocker debut. Let me just state for the record that climbing into one of these contraptions was not easy. Playing in one of them, as it turns out, was much harder. Let's just say I wasn't very good, like at all. In fact, I was probably the reason why my team lost. I mean, how do you miss a shot at blocking that goal? Still smiling though, I guess I could snag an award for Team Spirit. It wasn't minor improvement as time wore on, but there's no saving that kicking form, particularly not with that bubble around me. Successful game of Bubblesocker, we lost, but we had a good time. Which, as it turns out, was really the main goal of the game. I think my favorite part about playing was just that all of us suck at it. So like, there's no, you're not feeling self-conscious. Like, even if you get knocked over, it's just kind of like part of the game, so it makes it more fun. It's the sort of fun that the Boston University Intramural Sports Department is always on the lookout for. We actually don't offer a lot of those trendy new things, like you'd consider Bubblesocker. Bubblesocker is more of an aberration for us. So you never know. It could be popular this semester, next semester, maybe next year. And then after a while, people, you know, they're on to the next thing, whether it's maybe glow-in-the-dark football, which exists, or any of these things that tend to pop up, pique people's interest, and then, you know, they're on to the next thing. So we'll see, and we'll try and adapt and continue to offer the students here at BU stuff that are going to keep them active and interested.