This Saturday’s forecast calls for sunshine and mid-80s temperatures, perfect for a day at the lake – bashing full-on into your friends while wearing a giant bubble around your body, playing a weird-but-fun, sort-of-soccer sport called Knockerball.
On June 10, at the "Gun Club" rugby field north of Bradford Beach and just south of the Linnwood Water Treatment Plant off North Lincoln Memorial Drive, Knockerball Milwaukee is inviting adventurous physical contact-lovers to try their game from 1 to 3 p.m. along the lakefront. It costs $10 for 20 minutes of action, and it’s worth watching this admittedly melodramatic but still cool-looking YouTube video of the sport to understand what Knockerball is all about.
So, if you’ve ever wanted to play a game where you emulate, on a somewhat smaller scale, the atomic particles in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider but on a nice day outside while also kicking a ball around, this is for you. Seriously, though, I’ve played Bubble Soccer before, had the youth team I coached try it and watched it at Milwaukee Wave games – Bubble Soccer is a different company and name, but the same idea – and it is indeed great fun and quite safe.
You’re enclosed in a large inflatable see-through bubble, inside a protective safe chamber with handles and a shoulder strap that allows you to maintain and maneuver the ball, and then you play soccer – though you’re encouraged to, as the Knockerball website says, "boink, bonk, roll and knock" your opponent around.
It’s a game that doesn’t require much real skill and can be played both indoors and outdoors, provided you have enough space, which won’t be a problem Saturday on the lakefront. Knockerball Milwaukee, which brings all necessary equipment to the events and also hosts its own, serves the greater metro area. Contact them and learn more here.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
