In an effort to create a stronger sense of how the midwest game is developed i am starting this thread to discuss some normalizing of the rules. This will help new players understand the game and when cities play each other there will be less confusion. I have a couple of ideas about things that would be helpful but first it would be good if maybe milwaukee posted their rules from the last tournament and we then discussed what worked and what didn't.

kevin walsh

Originally uploaded by pete_d

So my body has finally recovered enough to start thinking about what happened last Saturday. Milwaukee Bike Polo Club hosted the tournament in what was the best thing we have seen in the midwest in polo action. In someways the tournament has shown the dedication that two cities, madison and milwaukee have put into their bike polo clubs, milwaukee the hosting city put seven teams in the bracket and madison was able to field five. The brackets played out nicely with four teams from milwaukee advancing to the playoffs, three from madison and one from chicago. Madison team #1 team that consisted of myself, kevin and ben steamrolled through the round robin undefeated as well as milwaukee team #9 which consisted of Jake, Eric and Joe. We took the first two seeds in the tournament. Madison even polished off a milwaukee team by scoring five goals in less then two minutes and forty seconds. Madison team #5 made up of Jill, Max and Jon Atwell played the milwaukee crew team #11 in the quarterfinals for what was my favorite match to watch of the day. Milwaukee #11 pulled through the victory but it was a tough battle that the made it through. We made it into the semi-finals where we played milwuakee #7 and we were cruising until we hit a brick wall in the goal name steven, we had to give it everything to put through a final goal that allowed us to win in two games, 3-0, 3-2. In the finals we met our longtime rivals in miwaukee #9, madison came out swinging with some long goals and our speed played to the advantage and we pulled a win out in the first game at 3-2, milwaukee struck back in the second to pull out a 3-2 victory in near dusk conditions. We played the final game in almost dark which resulted in madison coming back from 2-1 to win in dramatic fashion of 3-2. It was a hell of a game and shows the level of competition that has developed between the two cities. It is quite impressive to see the bond that these two cities have developed in their rivalry and we look forward to future matches.

A polo photo of all involved in the Cut and Crew Classic

Originally uploaded by jonny.hunter

What a nice group of people.

The Champions

Originally uploaded by jonny.hunter

So we came down to play in the Cuttin Crew Classic polo invite. Our normal team of ben/jonny/kevin was broken up by kevin testing positive to a blood transfusion earlier this spring so we picked up a third in the very capable Mike Morrel. As always Milwaukee came in style, sporting there color co-ordinated jump suits. In a move that surprised many, i gave up the dan marino for a better geared ratio bike that i had loanded to Morality earlier this summer. The tournament was laid out in such away that each team played a round robin against everyone, so we played a full on 9 games in full during the initial series against a full assembly of teams. The games were played first to three points or whoever was ahead at 10 minutes was declared winner taking three points for a win, and one point for a tie.

Milwaukee A team cruised through the round robin with an undefeated record, they beat us 1-0 in what was probably the best game of the day. I would have loved to play it out to 3 but in interest of time we called it at 10 minutes. Madison made few friends in chicago with a controversial intentional foul by myself for not leaving the goal area after a foot down and after we took a 1-0 lead we played keep away over by the lake. I guess we will not be winning the sportsmanship awards this time around. The finals ended up being Milwaukee A team versus Madison/Chicago. We got there by ben putting in what as probably the goal of the tournament, a shot going uphill from about 30 feet out that placed the ball through lucky's triangle.