Sacto Polo.
This Sunday Pat, Tom, Brad and I went to a bike polo tournament in Sacramento. We spent an hour and forty minutes driving down, eight hours playing and watching polo, and two and a half hours driving home.
The last time any of us Chicoan polo players had a chance to play with a collection of other teams was in 2007. Brad and I plus Ryan and Nathan went down to San Francisco for the polo tournament attached to NACCC. We showed up with our home-brew wooden 6 lb. mallets and got thoroughly beaten by a Portland team that went on to win the day. I remember coming home and thinking “we’ve got to make some lightweight mallets out of golf clubs and ABS piping like those guys had.”
Since then our game has been improving, and our mallets have gotten much lighter and quicker. We’ve gone through generations of polo mallets. But this Sunday we saw once again how out of touch our little team is with the cutting edge of polo technique and technology. Hardcourt polo is not a rigid or standardized sport just yet, and Sunday’s games proved that we country bumpkins still have a lot to learn from the city kids.
So we got our asses handed to us, but it was still awesome fun. We met some really nice people, learned some new tricks, and in general made some big strides toward great polo justice.
It was funny to realize how much disdain I can spontaneously muster for players on an opposing team. All this contempt for their superior skills, for their energy and commitment, even for the bikes they ride. And then suddenly, as soon as the match ends, I love these people.
“Oh, you take polo way too seriously also? Oh, you take it even more seriously than I do? Oh you are so rad.” Everyone we met was another bike dork like us who didn’t mind a few dents in their frame.
The court they played on was perfect. It was an abandoned parking structure with polished smooth cement floors, an enclosed playing surface with walls and little angled corners, and they even had plenty of lighting for night play. The sky was dumping rain but we all stayed dry inside that warm little polo building.
There were plenty of teams from out of town, but Sacramento has a pretty big pool of players on their own. They have pickup games three times a week and generally play from noon ‘til dark on Sundays. They were very well practiced on the court.
We’re definitely heading back down for the next tournament they host, and will likely try to check out some pickup games too. It was really cool to find out there’s such an awesome community of players so near.