Lancaster City Bicycle Polo

This spring I discovered the sport of bicycle polo. I like it. A lot. So much, in fact, that it has made previously enjoyable activities such as mountain biking and poking friends on Facebook seem mundane.

If you've never encountered the sport before, imagine a version of equestrian polo played with a bicycle instead of a horse.

Add to that blood, frequent crashes and a sub culture born from the urban fixed-gear bicycling community. But picture the guys who actually ride their fixed gear bikes, not the ones who just lock them up outside the coffee shop.

Bicycle polo provides community, exercise and fun on two wheels through one tidy game involving bicycles, an orange street hockey ball and mallets fabricated from ski poles and plastic pipe.

Bicycle polo is like fight club on wheels. Without the aggression.

Hardcourt bicycle polo, as played in Lancaster City, involves teams of 2 or 3 men who battle for victory on a tennis court. Goals are established with traffic cones set a bike's width apart from one another. First team to score 5 goals wins.

If a rider sets a foot down during the game, he is immediately out of play and must tag in at center court before returning to play. Mallet on bike and mallet on rider contact are both prohibited. Otherwise, pretty much anything goes.

I'm hooked on this sport. We play every Thursday night and I find that if I miss a week, I get rammy and grumpy.

This video should give you a wink of an insight into how the game is played in Lancaster. It might be noted, however, that the intensity and speed of the game has picked up since I've joined the ranks.

Lancaster City Bicycle Polo