Wielding a makeshift mallet while gripping the handlebar of his bike, Scott Nowicki zooms across the basketball court chasing after an old, taped-up softball. An opponent on a BMX bike is on his tail as he slams the ball through the bright orange cones marking the goal line at the end of the field.
For Nowicki and fellow bike enthusiasts, it's just another game of bike polo.
The group, comprised of about 10 people, meets at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays at a south Tempe park to duke it out on the grassy fields. On this night, the fields are soaked after a weekend of rain, so they're forced to play on the concrete court, avoiding poles along the way.
Nowicki, a geology graduate student, formed the group in January. He says he heard about the game a while ago and bugged his friends to try it.
"Any spectator who comes out always ends up playing, even if they're not a bike-freak kind of person," Nowicki says.
Laurie Rogers, an anthropology senior, says she was hesitant to try the game, but Nowicki convinced her to come out.
"I thought it was going to be really scary at first with all the mallets flying around," Rogers says.
But after waiting a few rounds for the guys to get out some aggression, Rogers says she tried it out and is hooked.
The main rule in bike polo is to stay on the bike during play. If your foot touches the ground at any time, you've "dabbed."
The rider then has to take a lap outside of the field, out of play, and can circle back onto the field after completion. Players can only hit the ball three times in a row on the way to the goal.
To make the mallets, Nowicki says they gathered a bunch of old golf clubs, cut the heads off of them and put 8-inch sections of rounded wood on the ends. To make them aerodynamic, they drilled several rows of holes through the wooden ends.
"There are some spectacular crashes every now and then, but we've never had any broken bones or bikes," Nowicki says.
Players weave back and forth, blocking the ball with their front and back tires, and then circle back around to retrieve the ball. Breaks squeal and strain, and a player carefully balances on his bike in order to reach down to retrieve a dropped mallet without dabbing. There are many close calls with bikes nearly colliding when the players become a little too focused on hitting the ball.
"I've fallen off the bike, have almost flipped my bike while slamming on my brakes too hard," Rogers says.
Nowicki says there was a time he was riding his bike so fast that he couldn't stop to avoid another player.
"The guy was getting in my way and I yelled 'you better get out of my way,' " Nowicki says. "Both of our bikes got laid out, but nobody got hurt."
At first, Nowicki says no one could stay on their bikes and successfully hit the ball.
"Most of the time we didn't even hit the ball; just a whole lot of whiffs," says Nowicki.
Joshua Bandfield agreed with Nowicki that the team needed practice.
"We were really awful," says Bandfield, a research specialist for the Mars Space Flight facility at ASU. "At that point, it was just satisfying if you could hit the ball without falling off your bike."
But after a few games of practice, things started to gel.
"It's a sport that strikes you as idiotic, but it's pretty fun," Bandfield says.
Nowicki says the group organized a bike polo tournament earlier this year during Bike Week and plans to put on another in the spring.
At the end of each game, the group gathers at a team member's house.
"It's a lot of fun," Nowicki says. "You get the camaraderie of playing the game and then share the experiences while drinking a beer."
Reach the reporter at jgirard@imap2.asu.edu.
