Inaugural Polo at the Pasture, Cheyenne,Wyoming

  A little while ago Todd and Liz asked if I would play a polo tourney with them, there had been a considerable amount of time pass since the last time I had played in a tournament...or even picked up a mallet period, so I said yes. Well, like all things that I am unprepared the day came way too soon and I was unable to get any real practice in, but I figured 'oh well, it's a 1-day tourney, it's all for fun'.
  Saturday evening Ashton and I went to a graduation party in Fort Collins for our friend Cindy, Liz volunteered to watch Orson for us while we went out, that way when we got home we could make our way up to Wyoming. Me and Ashton did not end up making it back home to Greeley until around 11pm, so Todd, Liz and myself decided that it would be best if we waited 'til morning to drive to Cheyenne, so I packed my gear and we all turned in for the night.  
  The next morning we woke up around 6am, I ate a quick breakfast and then we got on the road. Driving north out of Greeley highway 85 will take you directly to Cheyenne, about 20 minutes out of town the landscape begins to change pretty dramatically, leaving the high plains of north Colorado and entering a sea of rolling hills and a couple of windmill covered mesa. the court was in a park on the south side of the city and we found it in no time.    
  The guys up in Cheyenne put on one top notch tourney, we arrived just as breakfast was being served.We made out way to the breakfast table and had our fill of coffee and breakfast burritos before heading over to the registration table. Like I said before the organization of this tournament was top notch, games started right on time and before we knew it our team was on deck.
  Our first game was against a Denver team called Killdozer, it was a close game but the put us into the losers bracket beating us 5-3. Once in the lower bracket we began to play much better, and won our next three games. Todd and I have played on several teams together at a few different tournaments and we usually seem to do best when we take an early loss and then work our way up through the losers bracket..and it worked for us in Cheyenne too. We played some tough games and we worked well together as a team given that we have been playing polo together longer than most. Finally we worked ourselves up to a game for 3rd place, this game pitted us against Bike Kwan Do featuring Kelly J. from south Florida and Tall George from Colorado springs. 
  Before our game we talked over a little team strategy and I volunteered to stay back and play defense and let Todd and Liz play forward and mid where they could run some of their plays that they had been working on. First off, I love playing goalie, I think I have more fun blocking shots that I do trying to make them and my strength as a road rider on the court makes it easy for me to take breakaways from the goal line. But like every polo game positions are not permanent and I did end up playing up the court a few times. On one such occurrence Liz was playing goalie and Tall George ended up sneaking a slow (lucky) shot behind her back wheel. I got back in goal and blocked several of Georges shots in succession but with a minute and a half to go he finally got one by me. I took the ball and ran it up the court with Liz, both of us took several shots but neither of us made any of them and the clock ran out with the score2-0. This put us out of the tournament, but all in all I would say that we had a good day finishing 4th, 3wins-2 loses

Team photo with Liz's free bike. Thanks Cheyenne!

  Once again Cheyenne did an awesome job hosting, all throughout the day they raffled off bike gear and around noon they brought in a seemingly endless amount of pizza! After awards were given out they raffled a complete ss bike and a Fleetvelo Scrabler frame set, Liz won the bike and George won the fame set! Needles to say I had a blast and definitely plan on coming back  for the second edition of Cheyennes polo in the pasture.