The Riding Reporter has an interview with Matt Messenger, one of the original Seattle Bike Polo players who helped elevate the game to the international phenomenon it is today. Since the lights at the Cal Anderson Bike Polo Court will not be working for another week and a half due to delayed electrical work, you can read about polo instead.
Since Matt’s start in 1998, the bike polo scene has grown ten times over and Seattle is on the front line.From the garage, Matt and I rode our bikes to Cal Anderson Park for a night of pick-up practice.“One of the first places we played was on the tenth floor of the US Bank parking garage downtown. It was a pretty awesome view,” he said. “We never got arrested but we got kicked out a lot of parking lots for playing polo.”Today, polo is played on the Bobby Morris playfield on the east side of Cal Anderson Park. After years of lobbying the Seattle Parks Department, the playfield was designated as a “multi-use court” in 2010, meaning it can be used for sports other than tennis, mainly bike polo and dodgeball.Competitive team games happen there on Monday nights and there are pick-up games being played on pretty much every other night of the week.
I am still annoyed when I go to Cal Anderson to play tennis, the one remaining tennis court is used, with a few people waiting around, and the “multi-use” court is completely empty. I understand the need for a multi-use court, but there must be a better compromise than completely removing the tennis portion, which would have a much higher usage rate than bike polo and dodgeball.