Mallet Ballet

Like herding cats: A report from last weekend's Hardcourt Bicycle Polo World Championship.

by Isaiah Thompson

Neal Santos WHACK IT IF YOU'VE GOT IT: The action at the first-ever Hardcourt Bicycle Polo World Championship.

[ sports you've never heard of ]

Back sometime in 2005, I was living in Madison, Wis., and had these crazy friends who did this crazy thing on the weekend. They'd get their bikes, grab a bunch of mallets, and go play polo —bicycle polo —in the park by our house.

I had maybe a faint inkling that somewhere out there, someone else was doing this sort of thing.

In fact, it turns out that I was watching the beginnings of a worldwide movement that's exploded in the last five years. And on Friday night, those same Madison friends showed up right here in Philly as one of 48 teams from around the country and abroad, to compete in the first-ever world championship tournament of "hardcourt" bike polo.

The two-day event, held at Cohox and Cione recreation centers in Port Richmond, was organized by local bike-enthusiast couple Kathryn Doherty-Chapman, who organizes Kensington's amazing annual Kinetic Sculpture Derby, and Montana Norvell, a local bike mechanic who's started what he hopes to become the sport's first governing body.

Because the thing about hardcourt bike polo is that no one, as things currently stand, is in charge. The sport is still in its infancy —"Like just got smacked on the ass and crying infancy," according to the tournament Web site — and completely self-governed, with tournaments organized ad hoc via Web forums. Every major tournament — and especially this first international championship —is by its nature a venture into uncharted territory.

Bike polo itself isn't new — the sport dates way back to the late 19th century, just a few decades after the invention of the modern bicycle itself. But it's just within the last 10 years or so that a new style, dubbed "hardcourt," has emerged, played on a hard surface instead of grass and using minimal, homemade equipment. The style came from the scrappier side of the bicycling family tree —the ballsy, urban do-it-yourselfers and bike messengers.

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"It's just like BMX riding or skateboarding — it's a reclamation of urban space," explains tournament organizer Norvell. "The rules are very simple, the equipment is pretty basic. If you can trick five of your friends into to doing it with you, you've got a game. And it's a shitload of fun."

And —precisely because the sport is still developing — it's one of the rawest spectator experiences you could ever wish for. There are precious few rules: Short of clocking someone in the face with your mallet, almost nothing's strictly prohibited.

Instead, the sport works something like a Roman gladiator arena: Fans — and bike polo fans are as intense as they come —dictate the outcome of a questionable point or a possible foul by screaming their opinions at the top of their lungs, booing the players and haranguing the ref (when there is one).

Take this moment, for example, from a match on Sunday, when the ball got close — very close — to the invisible line of one team's goal before their goalie knocked it away.

The ref, clad in camouflage and whose focus on the game occasionally faced competition from his perpetual can of beer, declared it a point.

"It crossed the line," he shouted. "I saw it."

In most sports, that'd be the end of it. Not so: Disgruntled spectators began shaking the chain-link fence and yelling at the ref. "No goal! No goal!"

The ref looked around and shrugged. "No goal!" he finally shouted.

In another match, one player T-boned an opponent, ramming him dead-on. When the opposing team called a time-out (not a foul), he protested, taking his case directly to the crowd: "They already used their time-out!" he shouted, raising his arms and circling the ring as if challenging the entire audience to dare defy him. But they did, along with his own teammates, booing him into submission.

"Imagine a bunch of guys, the first time they decided to get out on a frozen pond and start slapping a disk around with sticks — that's what's going on here," says Peter Dalkner, who manages Trophy Bike Garage in Northern Liberties and spent the weekend volunteering tools and services as an emergency mechanic. "There's no penalty box," Dalkner explains. The only decision-making body, he says, is "just the peers on the sideline heckling you."

In that sense, it's a sport well-suited for Philly — as was proven this weekend, when dozens of neighbors from Fishtown and Port Richmond showed up to watch, and were captivated.

"I think it's great!" said a deeply contented Jim Quinn, who lives a few blocks away from Cione. "I heard about it last night, I came out, and I been here since."

Indeed, for a man who'd never even heard of the sport, Quinn —along with a gaggle of neighborhood friends and children — had apparently become a die-hard fan within hours, shouting as loudly as anyone, raising his beer cozy in deep-felt kudos after a good goal.

"Most of us growing up around here all rode our bikes," Quinn said almost wistfully. "Maybe it could lead to kids out here playing —they got bikes."

And if hardcourt bike polo keeps expanding as fast as it has been, Quinn's grandkids might very well be bashing their bikes to pieces on the court soon.

But if the rawness and newness of hardcourt bike polo is part of what makes it so exciting, there's plenty of grumbling, too. The question isn't so much whether there should be order, but who should impose it — and polo players are not, by their nature, keen on authority.

Tournament organizer Norvell is all too aware of that tension. This year, he founded his own company, the Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Federation (hardcourtbicyclepolofederation.com), which he hopes will become the worldwide governing body of the sport — although he's quick to emphasize that it's little more than a conceit right now: "It's an idea for a governing body for a sport that is as yet reluctant to be governed," he explains. "My goal is to take the skeleton of this governing body and pass it off."

Much of the discussion over the sport's future, meanwhile, takes place online — specifically on bikepolo.ca, based out of Toronto, which hosts what is probably the world's busiest bike polo forum, and where Norvell (or "The Federation") is occasionally and ruthlessly derided by fellow players.

"Everybody agrees that it needs to happen, and everybody agrees that they don't want me to do it," Norvell concedes. "And everyone agrees they don't want to do it, either."

Kevin Walsh, who founded and maintains the forum (and who is an old acquaintance), says that for his part, he wants to preserve the anarchic, kind-of-consensus-driven decision-making that takes place on his site —but does recognize the need to get organized before, inevitably, the corporate wolves smell fresh meat: "I don't want us to get taken over by Nike," he says.

But the weekend's grumblings were mostly drowned out by an incredible set of games — some of the best ever played, I'm told —that ended in a grueling victory by Seattle over East Vancouver, much post-tournament beer drinking and loving goodbyes. For most of the players, after all, the sport's attraction has nothing to do with governance or rules.

"It's community," said a glowing Meg Lee from Portland. "It's friends."

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)