LexRides

[brokebike]

*edited (this was cut and pasted from a previous posting on Sunday night, post-tourney)

Lex brought 4 teams to Chi-town. Definitely the largest showing of any city at the tournament... that impressed a lot of folks when we told them.

Honkey Ballers (Shane, Pat, Burton)
The Thirst Rockerz (Chris, Kyle, Drew)
Cool Wave (Jakub, Tiffany, Scott)
Taco Truck (Me, Grant, Kevin)
Andy played as a free agent on a team appropriately named, Stith

Saturday was all round-robin, so each individual team played 5 games. Felt mostly like a day of pickup games, with everyone feeling each other out and getting used to different levels of play... especially in terms of being overly physical. Lexington had to learn how to throw a shoulder and hack a mallet right back at most teams, even though we usually play pretty nice and clean.

Lexington did really well in the second day of play on Sunday (double elim. brackets). Although three of the four Lex teams were dropped into the losing bracket on their first game, all of our teams ended up fighting ferociously through the losers bracket, knocking down solid teams from St. Louis, NYC, Chicago, Richmond VA, Milwaukee and Madison. Drew, Pat, Kyle, Burton and Grant all performed like fucking champs, but everyone seemed to have an extra something in them on Sunday that they didn't have on the first day... I think we were just a lot more confident and comfortable.

Chris, Tiff, Kyle and Wes took part in the messenger races, and Chris ended up taking second in the skid contest. I guess you could now unofficially say he's the #2 skidder in North America.

Honkey Ballers lost Tedder after Saturday's games due to him catching his finger in the fence and most likely breaking it. Pat, Shane and Matt went up against some of the toughest teams the first day, so it was an unfortunate, but honorable casualty. Drew subbed in for him on Sunday with Pat and Burton and they didn't miss a beat... making it farthest in the brackets out of all of the Lex teams. If I had to pick a NACCC Polo MVP from Lex, it would have to be Drew, simply because he played his ass off on not one, but TWO different teams on Sunday - one time playing nearly three consecutive games!

We had a blast, made some great new polo friends, drank lots of canned beer (given), and definitely upped our game a lot.

Others who made the trip, please post your recollections, triumphs, agony, injuries and police stories here.

Also, I wanted an excuse to post this photo of my crazy-ass teammate:

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[brokebike]

check it out... while trying to see if they had some sort of website, I stumbled across this article from that Columbia, MO team's local newspaper:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/08/28/bike-polo-team-compete-chicago-tournament/

those guys were cool as hell... I got the feeling that like our Lexington crew, they just didn't give a shit and were there to play and have a good time. I'd like to play with those guys again sometime.
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[brokebike]

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[brokebike]

Total goals scored by Lexington (by team) during round robin play on Sat.

Honkey Ballers = 7
Thirst Rockerz = 4
Cool Wave = 1
Taco Truck = 11
Stith = 7

I'll try to post the rest of the stats from the weekend as they come in.
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[brokebike]

Video of Thirst Rockers Vs. Milwaukee's B team on Sunday (Grant is subbing for Chris Simpson in the game, along with Kyle and Drew).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIq5By6E_lQ
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[beardcrumbs]

I had a great time playing Milwaukee B twice and losing twice. They play a skilled and clean game. I think the video started after this but the helmeted milwaukee player scored a goal from wide out that was really impressive.