So there is a rudimentary way to tell if someone is a brand spanking new player or if they have been playing for a good long while (pro tip: it’s how much they savor the taste of the first PBR on a hot day) – but it’s also how quickly they try to recover the ball after missing the pass/shot/general handling mistake.
A new player (and, to be fair, even a more experienced player who just never learned this lesson) will try for a shot, miss, and then kinda give up. Even moreso, you’ll see players who miss the pass and then keep going in the same direction they were before (instead of trying to dash for the ball).
Lemme tell you: unless you have a team-mate who is shadowing you or is in a position to recover, you should be the person going for that errant ball.
“But Crusher,” I hear you say “The guy on the other team is already facing the right way and going after the pass I flubbed, wah wah wah wah.”
Yeah, whatever.
You might not be able to get the ball back in control, but you’ll be a fine sight better when it comes to disrupting the upcoming play than you will be if you just keep heading down court whilst gently nudging your handlebar to turn back into the play. Bike polo is great in a lot of ways, and one way that it’s great is simply that it doesn’t allow for pity-parties.
So you missed the shot and the ball careened off of your spokes – great, go get that ball, or at least frustrate the guy or gal who is trying to recover it for themselves.
By trying to recover, you’re stopping a “bad” thing from getting worse. Moreover, you’re giving the rest of your team time to reset (into either a defensive position or into a better one to gain possession of the ball).
We all enjoy Mr. Do Videos. He clearly loves and understand the sport, making his videos the very best you’ll find on the web for watching the sport, watching highlight reels, or just getting pumped up for a tourney (as I find this video does pretty magnificently). Mr. Do has pretty much made his name synonymous with the filming and producing of bike polo on the web. We all owe him a debt of gratitude and a debt of respect.
And only 50 of you bastards actually went ahead and threw him a bone.
Imagine my surprise when I woke up today to find myself wearing a dress. NOW imagine my surprise after I found out that the time was up for donating money to Mr. Do video with only 50 contributors taking up the call. Fifteen dollars?! You couldn’t just hold off on going out a single night to ensure the very best bike polo videos to watch in the future?! Porque?!
I get it-no, really. You work hard for your money, and it’s yours to spend how ever you want to. He’s going to make videos anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to hurt at all for not helping the man out. So just sit back and enjoy those overpriced coffees, scones, and chocolate-squares-from-fair-trade-New-Guinea you bought for you and your date. Just please turn a camera on them so we can all enjoy it. I’m sure it’s just as thrilling to watch as a Mr. Do video.
I spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon watching the ladies of ladies army slay it in the rain. It became remarkably apparent in short order that the Valkyries and Hot Honey Biscuits were going to face off for the final (actually, it wasn’t that apparent, Great White North and Cobbler Politics also had a pretty fair chance at going for the top finish), and it was one hell of a surprise when the Valkyries scored twice in the first 45 seconds and then build on that lead for the rest of the game.
The winning goal came from Quinn, and it was one of the most beautiful goals I’ve seen in a long time. It didn’t look physically possible, really, and I guess that’s what made it amazing.
Anyway, congrats to all the players in Ladies army and to the long line of sponsors who were mentioned throughout the day (and to Jinxy, who somehow wasn’t mentioned at all while I was watching the live stream: thanks for providing the wheel covers to the girls and for all your support of Ladies Army over the years).
Guess it’s back to boring, Ladies Army-less weekends, now…
There is, occasionally, a very #polowriterproblem when it comes to this blog – there is too much going on and only one of me to talk about it. So, to bring it all together, I’m writing a list of the things I’m excited about right now. Right now, baby.
1. Ladies Army this weekend: no, I couldn’t afford to go, but I’ll be following along on podium and watching live feed action (bikepolo.tv, for the win). That’s just as good, as I can legitimately get drunk in my writer’s aviary and feel like I’m there (in that I’m drunk and considering taking off my shirt).
2. Fixcraft’s new line of stuff: the upcoming cleat, the lifeline braking systems/accessories, the new colorful shafts. Sweet God there are just so many things coming out of that place. I’m going to pokemon the hell out of it. I was a touch worried when they missed the “beginning of the season” release of items, but now they are back on their game and showing the world what they can do.
3. Shaped Heads: Northern Standard and Modifide are pushing bike polo equipment forward with their new head designs. I’m planning to write up a bit more on this in the future, but what excites me the most is that there is something different. Not better, necessarily, but any experiments in our sport are great–I’m glad they refuse to sit on their haunches.
4. Mr. Do: OH MY GOD I JUST LOVE HIM. I’m happy that this site supported him, and I’m happy that you’re now going to go over to his page and donate money to him, to. You can do that right here and right now. 66 hours left. Hop to it.
5. Team Scrimmage: I have a team, and we are Scrimmage, and we are going to Flour City (at the very least). It makes me feel good to have two other guys who love the sport as much as I do (and don’t take competition too seriously).
There’s been a lot of hub-bub in the ranks of Lancaster United (by a lot I mean there has been a few emails here and there between four or five players) about working on our passing game. It becomes painfully apparent that the get-the-ball, shoot-the-ball-as-much-as-possible game is great within our own ranks, but it’s pretty damned useless against other clubs. We want to do better when we go out to play with the other kids, so we decided to dedicate time during pickup for a just-passing game.
And we were horrible. I mean, really bad. Try to imagine a seal playing bike polo and you’ll pretty much have the experience. We kept at it for a few games until I became frustrated and just started to play like I always do (which, really, isn’t far from a seal playing bike polo), and that was that.
I don’t think that we should steer away from working on what we aren’t good at (hell, that’s something I say on this blog all the time), but there is a level of commitment that can be damaging to your game and even your own level of enjoyment. When we decided to “have a passing game” we abandoned all other aspects of the game as a whole: shooting, blocking, laughing ,etc. We focused so intently on passing that we forgot the point of polo isn’t to pass. Read more
whether I’m referring to the flinching horse or the Charlie Sprinkle’s suggestion, who knows, but who cares. Click on the picture for the magic:
Here are 70 some pictures from my day at RVA featuring DC, RVA, C-ville, and Lancaster, and my typical wonderful Sunday pickup back home. enjoy the frivolity! Read more
By this point, you should know already that Northern Standard and Modifide shared information/planning on their mallet heads and shafts (explaining the similarity between the two companies’ designs). So I’m not going to go into that whole rigmarole about how similar this mallet head is to the Modifide ARC.
Point in fact, I think one of the few things they share is the hourglass design and the material used. Everything else seems pretty different, if you ask me.
Northern Standard sent me this mallet head (link here) to test out and give my honest feedback on, so I gave it to one of our local heavy hitters to get his opinion on the head and what makes it different. Irish (the heavy hitter in question) was more than happy to put this mallet together, having been impressed with the Modifide I was using and always excited to get something free that isn’t a potato.
First, some of the details direct from Northern Standard:
It struck me that, unlike the ARC, the NS head seemed more…how do I put this…mechanical than artsy? The ARC has a gradual curve to it that makes it seem like it was whittled down by some artisan craftsman named Hans or something. The NS looks like straight up science went into it. Maybe a better way to put it is this: the ARC looks like the entire head was built to “be” the curve, whereas the NS head looks like it started with the traditional shape and then changed the ends to fit the new design.
Maybe that isn’t a better way to explain it. Hell.
Anyway, it doesn’t make a noticeable difference, really. It comes down to preference on that point. Though, if I were more brushed up on my material science, I’d like to think that the more solid looking NS head would wear a little better against the extra pressure put on the hitting/scooping ends of the head.
When I asked Irish what he liked after a day of play, he said he liked how hard it hit, and how it just felt like a quality product. He also explained to me how he felt like he could look away from the ball a little more, as the hourglass figure allowed him to know where the ball would be (rather than the possibility of it just rolling off of his mallet).
He isn’t a scooper, but he says it is “adequate” at that. After four hours of play, wear was minimal and he felt confident it would last in the long run (something important to all players, as the price of this is $28 dollars pre-shipping).
I then asked Irish if he felt like the design of the head was making a noticeable difference in his play. To that he told me he wasn’t sure – it might just be that the design is “different”, and different is okay, kids. Different is healthy.
No red flags with the first-touch of this head from Northern Standard. I’ll ask Irish what he thinks in a few weeks after regular play, but I’m willing to say (as I generally say with NS products), that you won’t regret the purchase based on quality of build. We’ll see what Irish makes of his new hourglass figure in the coming weeks!
A little while ago Horse Invited me to travel down to Richmond, Virginny, for a big pickup day between multiple clubs (I honestly can’t remember all of them, but I want to say it was Lancaster, DC, RVA, and Charlottesville, maybe?). Naturally I was up for it as an irresponsible escape from completing my thesis for the MFA, so I signed on to travel with my fellows:
Yeager
Irish
Horse
Me
The pickup day was Sunday, which was fortunate as I received my new mallet stuff to test from Fixcraft on Friday and I had all of Saturday to walk around the house with it, frightening the cat. On Sunday I woke up around 5:30, put on my polo outfit (something off the shoulder, you know, for the boys), and went to pick up Horse.
We were supposed to meet Irish at Cycleworks at 7 AM sharp, so naturally Horse slept in until I was at his doorstep and stumbled onto the sidewalk with little knowledge as to what was actually happening. AND THEN WE WERE OFF!
…to Sheetz to get some breakfast. We agreed that if Irish wanted to stop somewhere, we’d just tell him we hadn’t eaten and then eat again. Ah, the joys of being big.
So we met up with Irish, loaded his Suburban, picked up Yeager, and were off. We stopped at a rest stop which had Ice cream and Red Bull, so I got that too, because go to hell, that’s why.
And then we looked, just casually, at the radar. Read more
