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NAH Bench Champs – Where does your club stand?

BenchPoints

As you know, NAH announced that they will be hosting a NAH Club Bench Championship. Basically, the 12 top polo clubs in North America will be traveling to Lexington, KY this fall to find out who is the best. The catch: clubs will be invited based on their 2014 NAH Series Rankings. In each of the NAH qualifiers, and at the NAHBPC, players will earn points for their club.

For the  ranking at the NAH qualifying series players will earn the following points: 1st : 10 Points; 2nd: 7 points; 3rd: 5 points; 4th: 4 points; 5th: 3 points; 7th: 2 points; <7th 1 point.

At the NAH Championships players will earn the following points: 1st: 50 points; 2nd: 35 points; 3rd: 23 points; 4th: 15 points; 5th: 10 points; 7th: 7 points; 9th: 5 points; 13th: 4 points; 17th: 3 points, <17th: 2 points.

It may not seem like it, but 12 clubs is a lot. Obviously, clubs with teams advancing to and performing well at Nationals have the advantage. However, clubs that roll deep but don’t necessarily have podium teams will squeeze smaller squads out.

The top spots will surely be taken by the historically top performing clubs, aka Cascadia: Seattle, East Van, Portland. San Fran will be a gimme because of The Beavers and that other handsome team from Cali.  But the rest are up for grabs.

I was hecka curious to see what the spread looked like, especially with big dreams for Boston’s future in bench league. So I nerded out HELLA and tabulated up the stats from the 2103 qualifier. Heres what it looked like:

(Note that I accounted for a few small “changes” from the NAHBPC 2013 podium.com results: Seattle gets the commish, Chicago gets Lomax, San Francisco gets the Beavers(duh), Boston is fanged, Porch gets the rad caps 2x points bonus, Emmet doesn’t count and as well as few other low point transfers from folks’ relocation.)

EDIT 3-18-14 13:00: Greg Valentine has been moved from CHI to ATX. Woadie’s city points go to EVAN.

 

2013 NAH City Ranking
City City Rank City Points City Players
SEA 1 218 19
SF 2 179 10
EVAN 3 49 5
ATX 4 37 9
PDX 5 32 3
BOS 6 24 6
TO 7 23 6
OTT 8 21 6
LEX 8 21 4
SKN 10 15 3
NYC 10 15 5
TLH 10 15 6

Rad! Get top 3 and secure your club an invite. For all other clubs, it is a toss up. You  will be rewarded for bringing a whole bunch of players (Austin), for bringing only a few if they kill it (E.Van & PDX), or if you do both (Seattle). And don’t forget about the sleeper clubs that couldn’t make it to their qualifier last year. Either way, I’m stoked to see what the points totals will look like in 6 months from now.

If you’re interested, please help contribute so we can get a full season of stats by adding your regional qualifier using the attached spreadsheet. Just replace the proper existing cells with your results, and you can send it back to me [aminott(at)gmail.com]. I’ll keep the updated tallys attached to this post.
EDIT 3-18-14 13:00: CASCADIA Quals has been added. I will update cumulative totals once all qualifiers are tabulatedClick for excel spreadsheet

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Podium Rolling Out New Features

features

Podium, the brainchild of Portland Bike Polo’s Vince Foley, is arguably the most useful technological advance in the history of the poloverse. The software has streamlined the organization 129 tournaments throughout it’s history, including the past 3 World Championships (975 games collectively) and the 2013 European Hardcourt Championship, which  clocks in as the largest tournament EVER with 63 teams. The Podium interface allows tournament organizers to seamlessly queue up games while players can look on from their iPhones while fishbowling their tent on the other side of the venue in the shade.

Hardcourt Podium has started rolling out some new features for the upcoming season. Users now have the ability to register themselves to track their careers, a feature first debuted by the ill-fated www.Hardcourtbikepolo.org. Podium spit out a player’s tournament history, as well as statistics associated with his or her team.  The user can easily see the statistics from their profile, which includes tournament and game totals, cumulative and average goal counts (for and against them), as well as their goal differential per game and per tournament.

stats

It appears as if this new user based version of Podium will be the go-to source for the 2014 NAH Tournament Season. Registration and qualification processes will likely be built into the software, further easing the load on the tournament organization front.

Up until this week, the software has been free to use. But with the new ‘registration’ capabilities comes a small fee. Users can pay on a sliding scale, from $2 to $20, to take advantage of the new features. Quite frankly, given all the time Vince has put into Podium, this small fee is an absolute steal. Alas, there will  be  penny-pinchers.

$2! copy

spot me copy

It is only a matter of time before these doubters come around and realize that the price of a pint is simply worth a fluid and interactive experience at the next tournament you attend, especially when someone finally steps up their Podium display from a big screen TV to a big screen TOUCH TV.

Thanks Vince!

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If you know your history Then you would know where you coming from

Heres a cool little #tbt video from 2007 about the New York scene leading up to ESPIs.
Its a rad look into polos formative days, when polo was still like the wild west. Its great to see that how much dedication they had through the winter! Also Doug D. if you’re reading this will you sell us hardcourtbikepolo.com?

So, someone shave Zach’s beard for the greater good. And I wish I didn’t know Chombo’s name was actually John:(

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Throwback Thursday: Before they were Beavers

beavrgq
Before GQ, even the Beavers put their time in on the Allston Courts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gus snapped this photo for legitbikepolo.com at ESPI IV in Boston, 2009. No nets, ski poles and not even one front brake. And take a look at these whips! What a long way we’ve all come since 2009, except Alexis, he hasn’t changed a bit.


espimilwaukee

Heres to another 4 years of mind bending progression for our sport!

 

Bonus close up:

 

espialexis

 

¿

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First of 2014: Hockey Town USA

Many inches of snow and ice are standing between us and our home polo turf.
1e97020c9bed11e385ae12776198573d_8 photo: bearcat2004
Two weeks after returning from Puerto Rico our polo needs had to be fulfilled. So we loaded up and headed to Saugus for the first Hockey Town USA session of 2014. We hadn’t been back since the Eastside Qualifiers. Nothing had changed.
hockeytowntoni photo: bostonbikepolo
A few new friends joined us. Justin, Grace and Dominique are photojournalists who are going to be following us on our adventures over then next few months. We like them, and we like the photos they’ve taken. We’re looking forward to what they have up their sleeves.
tumblr_n1gjckwwZN1topeiuo1_1280photo: Grace Donnelly
And then we capped the night with a lazy susan at Kowloons
fedd34009c4511e3b3260e53db4a3fd9_8 photo: bearcat2004
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Looking Back: ESPI I-IV Shirt Collection

Marco (@philthycourier) just ‘gramed his ESPI shirt collection from ESPI, ESPI 2, ESPI 3, and ESPI 4, (the latter having been held here in Boston. Eastside polo history goes back quite a ways relative to other regions, but since “qualifiers” were adopted, there hasn’t been all that much to write home about. Only a small handful of Bostonian poloistas have continued to play since ESPI 4. Can the “new generation” of Eastsiders (looking at you, Sprinks) live up to our wild and crazy past?

ESPIShirts
ESPIShirts

 

Dude, man, Marco, thanks for the shot!