tralized polo locations. The following World Chapionship in Philadelphia had more money to work with than Toronto and, as one finds with something that is young and has money, more problems to face. In the earliest days of the Championship, the responsibility to facilitate all aspects of the event relied solely on the local organizers—and as Ben Schultz, President of the NAH explains, the Philly Worlds relied mostly on just one individual. The Championship had a lot of faults, but also a lot of lessons. “Certainly, he proved himself to be a bad planner. But, he was right about a great many things regarding the future—membership and ownership of the game being two of them.” Schultz explains.

This all of course led up to the creation of the North American Hardcourt Bike Polo Association, or the NAH, in 2010. While the mistakes of the Philly World Championship were certainly not the impetus for the creation of the NAH, the NAH took an ownership of World Championships on American soil from that point forward.

The NAH’s original 21 representatives (elected democratically from the existing seven regions) was tasked with standardizing rule-sets and tourney structures, two things that it still triumphs and struggles with today. With the creation of the NAH, bike polo took a decidedly quick turn towards normalization and standardization, which naturally lead to an ongoing series of struggles with the DIY origins of the sport, but that’s an entirely different subject from the one I’m exploring today. In short, the NAH’s involvement in World Championships is just one more element that helped move it along as a cemented event for bike polo as a whole.

Which brings us back to the 2013 World Championship in Weston, FL, which is perhaps the location most suitable to show how the Championship has changed since its earlier days. Whereas past Championships took place in Toronto (’08), Philadelphia (’09), Berlin (’10), Seattle (’11), and Geneva (’12), Weston is decidedly not an international city. On the surface this may strike a reader as a sign of decline, but in fact, it’s the opposite: the ability to host a World Championship in a no-name (no offense, Weston) location successfully shows the ability and standardization that the

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