Bloomington Bike Polo Club organizes 1st Indiana Invitational tournament

During a players-only meeting before the first-ever Indiana Invitational bike polo tournament, Zack Woodward laid down the rules.

“Rule No. 1, don’t be a dick,” he said.

More than 60 players on 20 different teams gathered Saturday morning at the Wright Quad tennis courts to participate in the all-day event.

Armed with homemade mallets made from household objects such as ski poles and plastic gas pipes, players came to Bloomington from seven different states across the Midwest.

This underground tournament was planned by senior Travis Davies, president of the Bloomington Bike Polo Club, and Bloomington resident Woodward, who brought the sport to Bloomington from Seattle.

Davies and Woodward spread word about the tournament by sending invitations to interested players through websites such as www.hardcourtbikepolo.com.

Bike polo has more in common with street hockey than it does with actual polo, Woodward said, and only a few rules make up the sport.

Each game lasts ten minutes or until a team makes five goals, and if any part of a player’s body touches the ground, the player must ride back to the middle of the court and tap a pole to get back in the game.

“I rode my bike anyway — might as well thrash some stuff while doing it,” Davies said.

Many teams who participated in the tournament did not arrive with a team name and made them up on the spot before the playing began — the more lewd, the better.

The opening match pitted the Dignified Gentlemen against the Newb Kids on the Block, with the Gentlemen taking the first win.

Evan Ely, a member of the Dignified Gentlemen, said his team left from St. Louis around 3 a.m. Saturday and reached Bloomington at 8 a.m., two hours before the tournament started.

“Sleep deprivation is just part of the game,” Ely said.

Some of the teams booked rooms in local hotels for the weekend, but the majority found themselves sleeping on other players’ couches.

“We’re a close community,” Davies said. “I can crash at other players’ houses.”

As the tournament progressed into the afternoon, the heat began to take its toll on the players. During his team’s game against the Dignified Gentlemen, Woodward pedaled to the fence to throw up away from the court.

On the other court, a player lay on her back in pain after getting hit in the throat with a mallet. After recovering on the sideline, she finished out the game.

Nearly eight hours and countless scrapes later, the Dignified Gentlemen defeated the Butt Suckers from Columbus, Ohio, to win the tournament as well as a golden trophy made from old bike parts welded together.

Woodward’s team, the Electric Wizards, made it to the semifinals before facing elimination, but he said he couldn’t care less.

“No matter what the result, the tournament is a success just in that it happened at all,”
he said.