Author: John Hayes

2014 NAH Qualifying Series

Posted on by John Hayes

The NAH Qualifying Series will decide which 48 teams fight for the North American Bike Polo Championship in Minneapolis on the weekend of July 12th.

Locations

Qualifiers will be taking place in the following 10 locations:

April 26th/27th
South Central: Albuquerque, NM (24 teams), 4 teams qualify

May 3rd/4th
South East: Atlanta, GA (32 teams), 3 teams qualify

May 10th/11th
Mexico: Guadalajara, Jalisco (24 teams), 3 teams qualify

May 24th/25th
Cascadia: Seattle, WA (24 teams), 11 teams qualify
Great Plains: Saskatoon, SK (24 teams), 3 teams qualify
South West: Folsom, CA (32 teams), 3 teams qualify*

May 31st/June 1st
Eastside: Lancaster, PA (36 teams), 6 teams qualify
Heartland: Indianapolis, IN (24 teams), 5 teams qualify
June 7th/8th
Great Lakes: Milwaukee, WI (24 teams), 4 teams qualify
Northside: Ottawa, ON (24 teams), 5 teams qualify

*If the Beavers attempt to qualify in their 2013 lineup, the qualifier they play in will get an extra slot, otherwise it goes to Eastside (as next in line for a bonus spot).

Qualifying teams

All teams must consist of a majority of players whose home club is in geographical North America.

Teams can play in any region, but priority will be given to teams who are in-region.

To be in-region for a qualifier, a team must meet one of these criteria:

The majority of players must have their home club in the region where the qualifier is
The majority of players must have their home club within geograpical North America, but are not in any region: This includes, but is not limited to Hawai’i, Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Newfoundland & Labrador, PEI, Nova Scotia, Puerto Rico, Greenland, Cuba, Guatemala, or any of other Central American and Caribbean countries.
The team does not have two players whose home club is in the same region, but has one player with whose home club is in the region the qualifier is in.

A players home club is defined as the club a player plays the majority of their polo in, on March 21st 2014. For any queries of this, please contact your regional rep, or tournaments@nahardcourt.com. Any decisions made by the NAH during registration will be final.

Registration Timeline

Friday March 21st 10pm ET/7pm PT: Qualifying opens for South East region*
Sunday March 23rd 10pm ET/7pm PT: Qualifying opens for all other regions

*One region is chosen first, to make sure the any issues with the registration process can be resolved before the majority of players register.

Both in-region and out-of-region teams can register at this point.

Until Tuesday April 1st, only in-region teams will be confirmed, on a first-come-first-served basis.

After Tuesday April 1st at 12pm ET/9am PT, any remaining slots will be filled from the whole pool of teams (in-region status will no longer apply) on a first-come-first-server basis, until the qualifiers are full.

Registration Process

A player may only register for one qualifier at a time. Any subsequent registrations, including that player will be ignored, unless the player or team contact tournaments@nahardcourt.com, or the qualifier for the first registration fills up before they get in.

To register, at least one player on a team must create a Podium Profile, at https://www.podiumbikepolo.com/ This should be done well in advance, to avoid any issues during team registration. Please make sure your profile references the correct club.

Once registration opens, one player on a team must use the registration links (to be provided), on Podium, to register for the tournament. Once confirmed, payment for the whole team will be automatically be charged to that player, based on the payment information provided on registering their profile on Podium.

All teams must consist of 3 named players, before they will be confirmed, no players may be TBC. Only once paid should a team consider themselves confirmed for a qualifier.

Registration Fees

Registration fees are unified across all tournaments, to create a level playing field. The only exception is Mexico, with a lower fee, due to different economic norms.

All qualifiers include a 33.3% NAH membership fee, which go towards payment for referees, volunteers, and other features to be announced later.

Mexico: $60 + NAH fee = $80 per team.
All other qualifiers: $90 + NAH fee = $120 per team.

(photo credit to Liam Gilson).

NAH Club Bench Championship

Posted on by John Hayes

NAH is proud to announce the first NAH Club Bench Championship.

The NAH Club Bench Championship will feature the top 12 clubs in North America, and will take place on the weekend of September 27/28th 2014, in Lexington, KY (Pending permits)

Lexington will be providing three top quality courts, and many years of organizing experience, which combined with NAH will produce the first North American Club Bench Champions.

Format

Teams will consist of players from one club. Each qualifying club can send as many players as they like, but only seven players may be dressed for each game.

The twelve clubs will be split into two groups of six, equally seeded. Each group will play a full round robin, five games each, over Saturday, and Sunday morning.

The two groups will play alternate games, with all six teams in the group playing at the same time. With breaks between games, and time for warm up, this means clubs will play for one hour, have ninety minutes break, followed by a short warm-up period.

Sunday afternoon will consist of a single elimination bracket for the top teams from each group.

Games will be 1 hour long.

Qualifying

The twelve clubs will be selected using the new NAH Points system. The eleven highest ranked clubs who elect to send teams, plus the host club, will qualify for the tournament.

Clubs will earn points based on their players performances in the NAH qualifiers, and NAHBPC.

Players will earn the following points for their clubs, with each player in a team earning points, rather than the team as a whole.

NAH Qualifiers:

All players: 1 point
7th: 2 points
5th: 3 points
4th: 4 points
3rd: 5 points
2nd: 7 points
1st: 10 points

NAHBPC:

All players: 2 points
17th: 3 points
13th: 4 points
9th: 5 points
7th: 7 points
5th: 10 points
4th: 15 points
3rd: 23 points
2nd: 35 points
1st: 50 points

Timeline

The rankings will be updated after each qualifier.

The top clubs, and waiting list will be announced during the prize giving of the NAHBPC.

The top eleven clubs will have two weeks to accept, and pay their registration, otherwise it will move to the next club on the list. Each further round will consist of three day periods where the next clubs can accept, until all 11 slots are full.

More details will follow as we approach September…

(photo credit to Kevin Walsh).

Posted in NAH

NAH endorses the bid of Montpellier for the 2014 WHBPC

Posted on by John Hayes

NAH endorses the bid of Montpellier for the 2014 WHBPC, but we would like to request a mid-September date. We are aware that August is a holiday period in France, but having such a date means the NAHBPC, and NAHBPC qualifiers need to be so early in the season as to potentially have a negative effect on those competitions. Most WHBPC tournaments have been organised and held outside of vacation times. Having a vacation month prior to a mid-September event date would still provide the key organisational benefits. Ultimately, we will accept the final decision made by Montpellier.

NAH requests that the bid of Timaru, New Zealand be considered for the 2015 WHBPC, rather than 2014, and would likely endorse that bid. But NAH would like to request Timaru investigate whether the court size can be increased. Our recent survey has 60% of respondents requesting 40 x 20 as the minimum court size, which Timaru does not currently meet.

NAH would also start the process to find a host for the 2016 WHBPC, with an expectation that after 2 years elsewhere, it will return to North America.

Please contact tournaments@nahardcourt.com if you would like to bid for WHBPC 2016 in North America..

Survey for WHBPC planners/organizers.

Posted on by John Hayes

On behalf of the worldwide polo community, we took some advice from a LOBP thread (found here) and decided to ask the community a few questions. This is an informal surveyed, merely used for reference regarding various organizing topics. Since there is no unified world organizing body this information is pretty superficial. None the less, it could prove to be useful in the future. You can find the survey here..

After 94 elimination games, Beavers won the World Championship.

Posted on by John Hayes

What a week we had down in Weston, Florida. After a Wildcard, 2 days of swiss round play, a day full of heartbreaking double elimination games and some temporary rain: North America’s Beavers came out on top in a decisive 5-1 victory over reigning champions Call Me Daddy.

The venue was spectacular and you couldn’t ask for much more from the Florida clubs who worked to organize this event. The weather was absolutely perfect, and even the rain was a nice relief from the oppressive heat. The tournament ran almost to schedule thanks to the amazing volunteers, and the level of play brought by the players was nothing less than impressive. Watching crowd favorites and new rivalries develop throughout the bracket was both inspiring and entertaining. One thing is for sure, the future of our sport is bright, and the players of North America should be proud to bring the game they work so hard on. Congratulations to Brian, Eric and Joey. The top shelf 4th goal, and the full court 5th goal will stand out in the memory of the bike polo community for a long time to come.

Here are the top 24 from WHBPC 2013:

1st Beavers (Eric, Brian, Joey SF)
2nd Call Me Daddy (Polo, Greg, Will Paris)
3rd The Assassins (Nick COMO, Joe, kouyo SEA)
4th Edisons (David FRA, Eddy GER, Anthony TOU)
5th The Control (Andrew CRZ, Ace NYC, Forrest SF)
5th Pilgrims (Rupert, Adam LDN, Pierre SF)
7th Getting Wild (Hayden, josh CBG, Jon LDN)
7th True Danger (luca CBG, Hugo, Alex Paris)
9th Wolfgang (Quentin, Manu, Clement GVA)
9th Portland United (Jason, Arlyn, Eric PDX)
9th The Makers (Nick LEX, Ben, Chris MKE)
9th We Are Animals (Jo FR, Piks GVA, Morgan LYN)
13th Big Country (Alex, Rory VAN, Henry VIC)
13th Journeymen (Dodi BUD, Robbie OTT, Nick TO)
13th Power Rangers (Max FKB, Phil GER, Robert HAM)
13th Guardians (Cody, julian, Dustin SEA)
17th Simon Says (Nicky, Chris, Jaouad ANT)
17th Warlocks (Miguel ATX, Floris NAN, Rob Paris)
17th Switchnics (Nic, Charlie COMO, Nick MPLS)
17th The Means (Chris NYC, Alexis OTT, Nick RVA)
17th The Greens (Christopher LEX, Drew LOU, Adam TO)
17th Mucko (Jake BOS, Ngaihon, Kevin TO)
17th Bill Murray (Emmet LDN, Sterling, jake SEA)
17th Mosquito (Duane, Daren, Will SKN)

14 North American Teams, 10 European Teams!

The 2014 season will feature groundwork being laid for big structure changes, an even better ruleset, and refined referee certification! There will be more information on all of these things over the coming months.

(Photo Credit: Brandon Carter)

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