The Big Boy Soap Hockey League, created by former Brandon resident Nick Pletcher, hosted a tournament in June at the J.C. Handly Sports Complex.
The former Bloomingdale High School student had an idea that took shape nearly four years ago, and it has finally come to fruition. He is a video producer and founder of Glass Eye Creative, a video production company located in Atlanta, Georgia. He had the idea to film and produce a soap hockey tournament in his hometown and play with the friends that he grew up with and went to high school with.
“During my bachelor party, I saw this video on YouTube of these people playing soap hockey, so I bought all the stuff,” said Pletcher, who added that he and his friends played all weekend and had a blast. “For the next four or five years, we’ve been playing it once or twice a year, trying to get together to play it.”
Soap hockey is played on a giant 30-foot-by-40-foot, soap-drenched tarp and is usually three versus three.
“We don’t really have rules like hockey. It’s kind of more rough and tumble,” said Pletcher. “People throw their sticks; people grab a hold of each other. It’s definitely a lot more loose and a little bit more wild than normal hockey.”
TC Drums played at the event, which had a turnout of about 100 people. It had several sponsors, and commentators from Pewter Report. It had eight teams of three compete in the tournament. It had influencers with over half a million followers come out to be the power players in the game. Each game was 10 minutes long, and each team got one power play, where for one minute they had the ability to sub in one of the influencers.
Swaggy P, who has almost 300,000 followers, played in the event.
“The event went fantastically,” said Pletcher. “I couldn’t have asked for it to go any better. We have a YouTube channel and an Instagram and a TikTok, so we’re going to try to keep posting content.”
Pletcher would like to have more of these events in the future.
“We don’t want to just have the one tournament, we want to try to do a little more,” he said. “We’ll be trying to do more games and stuff as the year goes.”
Pletcher said that his ultimate goal is to become a team like the Savannah Bananas, where they can tour and be on TV.
“They have their own YouTube channel. Something that could sustain itself like that and get huge sponsorships and bring out crowds. So, we kind of always look at them, and it’s like a shining star of what it could be. Being on TV, that’s our goal, bringing more crowds as we go.”
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