Calgary Journal Online

Hardcourt bike polo crashes into town

Invented over a century ago, bicycle polo is not exactly a new sport.   It’s basically the same as traditional polo, only with the horse swapped out for a bike.

In recent years, though, the game has moved off the grass fields and onto hard courts, with a few rules changed along the way. “If you like riding bikes, you’ll probably love it,” says Justin Gullickson.

The sport has been gaining in popularity in Calgary over the past few years, largely due to Gullickson, who got some of the first games going in the city.

Photo: Holly Hofmann/Calgary Journal

Gullickson, 37, first played in Montreal in 2004 and was smitten by the sport.  He came back to Calgary, built some mallets in his garage and started playing with some friends in a parking lot.

“A lot of [bike] couriers got into it because I’m a courier and my friends were. That’s how we kind of got started, but now we get a lot of non-couriers as well that come out,” Gullickson says.

Kent Simmons, 29, a friend of Gullickson and also a courier, has been playing hardcourt bike polo for about five years.

He says it started out with five or six people, but now there are multiple leagues. In total, he estimates there are 30 to 40 players in the city. Every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, anywhere from 10 to 20 usually show up at the West Hillhurst Community Association tennis courts to play.

Simmons explains, “We are working to stay on our best behaviour there -- keeping the violence and the language to a minimal so the community will let us stay because sometimes we get a bit rowdy.”

Since the courts are outdoors, the games are weather permitting.

“We’ll call each other to play that day,” Simmons says, comparing it to calling a friend up to play golf.

Hardcourt bike polo works similar to hockey, he says, except each team has only three players.  There’s a centre line, two halves of the court and a goal net at either end.

Simmons says the teams start lined up across the goal lines, someone yells “polo” and the players charge to the ball at the center of the court.

“You joust for [the ball], you shoot, you crash and yell at each other,” he says, describing the game.

(From left) Kent Simmons, Mike Croteau and Justin Gullickson joust it out at the West Hillhurst Community Association.

Photo: Holly Hofmann/Calgary Journal

Mallets clash and metal clinks on metal.  But Simmons says players must be respectful of one another, so the contact is limited to mallet on mallet, bike on bike and body against body.

“Body on body is okay, but it’s frowned upon because it’s ungentlemanly to be checking people a lot,” he says, adding that if another player is rough, players will play just as rough with him or her.

Because quick acceleration and good control are important advantages on a small court, many players, including Gullickson and Simmons, choose to ride fixed-gear bicycles, which means the bikes have one gear fixed to the hub (see article on fixed-gears, page 16).

Simmons says in Calgary because a lot of players are couriers, and fixed-gears are the ride of choice for most couriers, those are the bikes seen most on the courts.

In other cities, however, he says it’s mostly mountain bikes or single-speed bikes that players are riding.

“It’s interesting to see how many different kinds of bikes people can come out with. You can pretty much play with anything,” he adds.

Not only do the bikes vary, there’s a wide age range of people who play hardcourt bike polo here in Calgary.  Simmons says the youngest player is 13-years-old and some of the older guys are 40 and up.

Mike Croteau has been playing bike polo on grass fields for 15 years, but over the last year-and-a-half he’s moved over to hard courts too. He says there are only about 10 grass bike polo players in the city.

“It’s neat to play a different style of a game that you really like to play,” Croteau adds.

For him, he says one of the most challenging parts of the game is handling the bike because it’s not like basic riding.

He explains, “riding is about leaning and balancing, where as with this you’re sort of breaking those rules because you’re not supposed to look one way and turn the other way. The bike is part of your body. You don’t have to concentrate on that.”

The rider is concentrating on the ball or the other players, Croteau says, and no one is worried about falling off their bike because most of the players are experienced riders.

And falling is just a part of the game.

If a player does fall off their bike or put their foot down on the pavement during a match, the rules say he or she must touch the centre line before returning to play.

“It’s not as hard as people think,” Gullickson says, about the sport. “When you first watch it, it looks pretty crazy and most people are like ‘I don’t know if I can ride my bike like that’, but everyone starts somewhere.  You’d be amazed how quickly you learn…It’s like playing soccer or hockey with a twist -- with a bike involved.”

Despite the sport’s intimidating nature for some, it’s attracting more and more players.

But Croteau and Gullickson both say it’s tough to find a place to play bike polo in Calgary.  Gullickson says that he’d also like to find an indoor rink for playing in the winter.

When the weather is nice, though, game is on.  The 3rd Annual Area 51 Bowl takes place July 9-11 with players from Edmonton, Lethbridge, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and New York.