Pool Boys, penalties and posting: Adam Pietila’s ‘pesky’ personality shines bright
Sophomore forward uses social media to build personal and business brands
Kali Mick
2/5/2026
The first time Adam Pietila ever went viral, he wasn’t throwing a hit or chirping a rival student section. He was knee-deep in dirt, hauling materials for an above-ground pool installation under the Michigan sun.
He filmed the build and tossed the time-lapse on TikTok “just to see what would happen.” The result? A video with a whopping 6.6 million views.
Funny thing is, going viral off the ice only set the stage for who he became on it. While most players wait for the spotlight to find them through highlight reels, Pietila earned it with his grit, drive and a personality made for the moment.
“Tough.” “Multipurpose.” “Creative.” “Maniac.”
It’s hard for his teammates to pick just one word to describe the forward.
“Funny.” “Unreal.” “Intense.” “Compassionate.”
It’s just as hard for Pietila to describe himself.
“I would say I’m energetic,” he said, after a pause. “I try not to take things too seriously, but at the same time, be serious when I can. I keep it light. I’m very spirited, and I really like to win.”
With those adjectives in mind, Pietila is far more than a sophomore forward for the Badgers. To some, he’s a “Pool Boy,” spending summers building pools in Southeast Michigan. To others, he’s “admin,” the manager of the viral Pool Boys TikTok account. To Wisconsin hockey fans on social media, he’s the muse of the “Adam Pietila Fight Club,” with his physical play and taunts capturing the hearts of followers everywhere.
To all, Pietila is spunky, resilient and kind, with his personality shining through on the ice, in the locker room and on the “for you” page.
Learning hard work through hockey
Before building his first pool or posting his first TikTok, Pietila was just a kid from Hartland, Michigan, who loved hockey and didn’t mind hard work.
Part of a large family with deep ties to the sport, he started skating in third grade for an AAA program in Aspen, Colorado. He played there until his freshman year, when he returned home to play high school hockey for Hartland alongside his older brother, who was a senior.
Pietila ended up loving high school hockey so much that he decided to stay, winning a state championship with Hartland his sophomore year, something the forward describes as one of his “most memorable years of hockey.” His junior season was cut short by COVID, but Pietila bounced back with a strong senior year and earned a tender with the Bismarck Bobcats of the North American Hockey League (NAHL) in 2021.
After a year in Bismarck, he was drafted to the United States Hockey League’s Sioux City Musketeers, but staffing changes resulted in his return to the Bobcats for another year in 2022-23.
“They took me in like family,” said Pietila on his time in Bismarck. “I had a great two years there, probably some of my most memorable outside of high school.”
With a second year of NAHL experience under his belt, Pietila got another chance to make the jump to the USHL when he was drafted to the Youngstown Phantoms. He skated in Youngstown for the 2023-24 season. Originally committed to Northern Michigan for college, a coaching shift opened the door for a change to Wisconsin, encouraged by his Youngstown teammate, current Badger sophomore forward Ryan Botterill.
Pietila’s path wasn’t linear, but it shaped him into the player and person he is today.
“I’ve been able to form into whatever role is necessary for the team,” he said. “When I need to play more of a fourth-line role, I can accept that and just go do what the team needs me to do. I stay physical, play shut down and do the little things right.”
From hockey, Pietila learned how to be a hard-working leader, which comes through in everything he does, including building pools.
Enter @ThePoolBoysss
It takes a special kind of person to balance being a student-athlete and running a business, but Pietila can do it all. When the weather gets warm, he trades his hockey gloves for a pair of construction ones, working long days building pools at home.
“The Pool Boys,” officially CP Quality Pools, started in 2017 by Pietila’s oldest brother, Carson. He was inspired by his dad, who also used to build pools in high school with his brothers. The business has grown from a five-man crew in 2018, Pietila’s first year on the job, to a full-blown family affair, with 16 cousins working from sun-up to sun-down most days from April to August, building upwards of 500 pools every summer.
The business took off in 2020, and every year, the Pietilas have been able to upgrade their equipment and expand their crews to meet demand. As of 2021, the sophomore has been running his own crew, and he takes pride in how his leadership skills and personable demeanor have made him a hit with workers and customers alike.
“I think a big part of it is the camaraderie around it,” he said about his summer job. “Just making sure everybody’s having fun and staying on task – we like to make it a competitive thing to see how fast we can work on any given day. What keeps us going is continuing to get better at it and finding ways to be more effective and get our work done as fast as we can.”
In 2022, Pietila took on a new role – “admin.” That year, he began taking time-lapse videos of the pool building process for fun, providing customers with a “keepsake” from the experience. Eventually, he created a TikTok account for the business – @ThePoolBoysss – and started posting the time-lapses on it, earning 6.6 million views on his first video.
After realizing how TikTok could help the business grow, Pietila kept posting consistently, learning the strategic ins and outs of the algorithm to reach as many new customers as possible, accumulating 250 thousand followers in three years. He even got the account into the creator program, turning a hobby into a second form of revenue for the business.
“It has always been and still is something fun to do,” Pietila said. “The customers love to go on TikTok and see that their pool has a bunch of views, so that’s really cool. It’s also been a good way to get new work – we’ve gotten a couple of jobs from there.”
As admin, Pietila films, edits, captions and posts every video, using audience insights to decide when to post, what hashtags to use and how many times a day he should be active. He also engages in advanced social media tactics, such as community management, frequently responding to comments about pool building.
“I love being able to answer people's questions about above-ground pools because it’s a learning curve to figure out how to build them,” he said. “Being able to respond to people and help them learn how to do it is pretty great. If I were looking to build a pool, I’d probably go on TikTok and try to figure it out, so our account is a good resource for people. If I'm getting views, and people are learning what they need to know, everybody’s winning.”
The Adam Pietila Fight Club
Pietila’s virality doesn’t stop at just building pools. His self-described “pesky” and “physical” play lends itself well to social media, with many clips of hits and chirps getting major views online. Despite his knowledge of how to work a crowd, Pietila doesn’t purposefully try to go viral – his personality is one naturally built for the spotlight.
“I get pretty fired up during games,” he said. “I love everything about hockey and how the game can change and get physical. I love the camaraderie that comes with a chippy game. A lot of times, I forget that there are cameras. I always tell myself to watch what I’m doing on the ice. When something happens, all that goes out the window, and it’s whatever I’m thinking in the current moment, which is good and bad.”
Clips of Pietila’s play have captured attention from all types of accounts, from major media outlets to lifelong Badger enthusiasts, creating new fans such as Quentin Jehn, a graduate student at UW.
Jehn goes by @PrideOfWindLake on X, and he is one of Pietila’s biggest supporters, all thanks to his physicality and grit.
Jehn, as well as a few other Badgers-centered X accounts, comprise the “Adam Pietila Fight Club,” a group that hypes up the sophomore online after every goal, hit and taunt. Because of his ‘fight club,’ Pietila’s goals are some of the most engaged with content on game days – the group is incredibly proud that he is a Badger.
In fact, Jehn is so proud to be a fan of the forward that he even had a Wisconsin jersey with Pietila’s last name and number custom-made, and after interacting online a bit, the pair met face-to-face at the 2025 men’s hockey student shootout event.
“Adam dapped me up, and said that he liked the jersey,” Jehn said. “He asked me why I have it, and I told him that I was the Pride of Wind Lake on X. His eyes lit up, and he was shocked to meet me. It caught me off guard because I was supposed to be meeting him, not the other way around. I didn't expect him to care. Why should he? But that's who he is. It was amazing how in just a short time, Adam welcomed me into his world, let me share a bit of my world with him, and gave me something that I will remember for a very long time.”
Pietila’s account of the evening mirrors Jehn’s excitement.
“That was probably one of the coolest things ever,” he said on seeing his jersey in the wild. “I love the fans and everybody who supports me – that’s why we do it. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun without people who genuinely care and who really take it personally, as personally as we do. I love the support that I get, and it’s awesome to know that people care and that they’ll lay it out there and defend you online. At the end of the day, hockey is competitive, but it’s entertainment too. Being entertaining for the fans and giving them something to cheer for, I love that aspect of it.”
From the ice to the internet
There has long been tension between hockey and social media – players are raised on the idea that you “play for the name on the front of the sweater, not the back,” a philosophy that creates great teammates but sometimes distant personalities. For fans, that can make it harder to connect with players beyond their stat lines.
Pietila breaks that mold. Because social media has helped advance both his family business and his personal brand as a student-athlete, he approaches it with a comfort level – and purpose – that stands out in a sport often hesitant to let personalities shine. His willingness to be himself on camera shows that being a star isn’t solely tied to on-ice production.
Social media draws a lot of people in, especially those who may not know the sport. If we can get them to come to one game, that could be all it takes to make them a lifelong hockey fan.Adam Pietila
“Without social media, we wouldn’t have as many fans,” he said. “Without as many fans, there aren’t as many people at the Kohl Center. Not as many people at the Kohl Center, games aren’t as fun. It’s all a chain thing. The more you can engage with people, the more camaraderie there is surrounding the season.”
The forward isn’t afraid to have fun with content, participating in trends and making jokes to the camera to bridge his on-ice game with his off-ice personality. The result is a personal brand built on authenticity, humor and a competitive edge.
“I think he’s a super funny guy, and people like comedy,” said teammate Ryan Botterill on why Pietila is a fan favorite online. “He shows his real personality, and that’s what people like.”
Botterill said Pietila’s natural ease with people translates seamlessly to his digital presence – one reason fans gravitate toward him.
“Talking to people goes into social media, which he’s really comfortable doing and really good at,” he said. “He’s just himself, and that’s why it’s easy for him to get fans. Everyone loves him – he’s just being genuine.”
That blend of relatability and bite is exactly what draws in supporters like Jehn.
“I like players that have an edge, play with fire, and toe the line between setting the tone and playing dirty,” he said. “Adam fits right in with that group. That's the type of fire I want in a Wisconsin hockey sweater.”
Whether he’s trading chirps on the ice, cracking jokes at practice or manning a track loader with the Pool Boys, Pietila gravitates toward connection. Teammates, coworkers, fans – they all get the same mix of energy, humor and edge that defined him long before Wisconsin. Online, that same blend carries over, giving fans a front-row seat to the person behind the helmet – and a reason to keep coming back.
“It’s important to put yourself out there to allow fans to put a name and face to the player on the ice,” he said. “It makes them feel like they know you a little bit better, and I think they really appreciate that. Social media draws a lot of people in, especially those who may not know the sport. If we can get them to come to one game, that could be all it takes to make them a lifelong hockey fan.”