For the fall of the game

Published June 28, 2006 by The Chicago Journal
By KATHARINE GRAYSON, Staff Writer :: Photos Courtesy HuronBikes

WEST LOOP

Four
summers ago, a scrappy group of bike messengers working to bring a new
sport to West Town parks lured in prospective players with this catchy
slogan: It’s the most fun you’ll have falling down. The sport was bike
polo, and its enthusiasts report that lying prone on the grass for a
few minutes each round is one of the more endearing parts of the game.

But
while organizers of Chicago bike polo don’t take the game itself too
seriously–and don’t intend to–they are hoping to recruit more players,
and boost the sport’s profile enough to get a solid championship
tournament up and running.

Currently,
about six to eight people regularly show up at that particular week’s
designated park every Sunday afternoon to play a pickup game of bike
polo, a pursuit that’s loosely modeled after the traditional
equestrian-based sport, sans the horses. The U.S. Bicycle Polo
Association claims on its Web site that the sport actually started
officially in India more than 100 years ago, when British soldiers
“used bicycles to hone their equestrian polo skills.” (The Chicago
players, meanwhile, say they got the idea from friends in Milwaukee.)

All
told, the rules of the game are relatively simple. Two teams mount
bicycles and grab wooden mallets. Players then work to knock a ball
into the opposing team’s goal, which is demarcated with two small
orange cones. And in the process of weaving around one another,
cyclists inevitably fall and work to make quick recoveries. Whichever
team scores three points first wins.

There
are also official positions in bike polo, such as goalie, but the West
Town players don’t have enough participants yet to reach that level of
formality.

“We
fantasize about having enough people to have positions,” says one bike
polo player, who prefers to be known only as “Lucky,” during a break
between games at Humboldt Park.

The
game is already popular in Milwaukee and Portland, Ore., in varying
forms. The Chicago players use grass courses–specifically, open areas
at a number of parks, the most popular of which include Eckhart Park,
Union Park, and Humboldt Park. That style makes for a slower-paced
game, but cushier falls. In Portland, however, bike polo games are
regularly held on concrete and asphalt surfaces, on courts with hard
and fast boundaries. The difference between the two is something akin
to tennis vs. badminton, notes one regular.

“The
game moves a lot faster [when it's played on concrete], and requires
ball-handling skills that we don’t have,” adds Lucky, an easygoing
player with distinctive sideburns.

Leagues
that follow strict rules, based on horse polo proper, also require that
players not hit the ball until they’ve been running parallel to the
boundary lines for three bike-lengths. (“It makes sense with a 1,000
pound animal, but we’re on bikes,” comments Lucky.)

In
West Town, bike polo games are mostly informal. They use a kids’ soccer
ball rather than a sanctioned equestrian-style ball. Lucky, a
woodworker by day, makes the mallets for players himself. The field of
play doesn’t have any official boundaries–any area, tree or no tree, is
in play. The rules are geared more toward ensuring that players don’t
get hurt, including this key tenet, quoted in the group’s official
guidelines: “No player can have things on their bike or on their person
that could impale or otherwise injure another player.”

And despite all the falling involved, there have yet to be any serious injuries, players report.

“There have been some bloody knuckles, and we’ve destroyed some really nice bikes,” Lucky says.

Although
the participants themselves largely escape a game unscathed, bikes
often don’t leave without a few injuries, says former bike messenger
Jeremy Miller, who’s been playing bike polo for four years. Spokes are
often broken, and Miller notes that a fellow player’s bike frame once
was significantly damaged during a game. It’s enough of a problem that
bike messengers never use their day-job cycles, he says.

As
far as equipment goes, most players use largely low-gear track bikes,
which cope well with riding on grass at slow speeds, although mountain
bikes are also a viable alternative.

Overall,
it’s an easy sport to get into, Miller says, and also one that attracts
a lot of people looking for a laid-back game. Owen Lloyd, for instance,
says he likes the game because he’s not much into fast-paced racing.
Lloyd, who works at Rapid Transit in Wicker Park, has just recently
begun playing in Chicago, but has had some experience with the sport in
Portland.

“I
take to it more than racing,” he said. “The hardest part is going very
slow and not falling over–and tussling for the ball and avoiding
crashing into each other.”

Miller
also says the group of players is congenial, adding that the “only
fights have been with the Park District.” Although it’s very rare,
players have been kicked out of parks for not having permits–which is
one reason why they rotate playing spots.

So
far, the group’s advertising has mostly come by word-of-mouth, fliers,
and a MySpace Web site. Miller says, at times, he’s frustrated that the
group has had trouble recruiting more regular players. But, he says
he’s hoping the unpretentious sport will ultimately catch on.

“I love that anybody can play,” he says. “You just show up with a bike. There’s no elitism.”