This is very good information.
Do you still have the contact information for the people you worked with? If so, they may be approachable by NAH or other clubs. Perhaps they'd be willing to write letters of recommendation that could be included.
Organized campaign to improve polo courts?
I feel that with many discussions on growth of bike polo, perhaps as a community we should be collaborating to help get courts built. If not courts, places that playable.
I have a few ideas:
Regional Strategy. Target cities/areas that have other communities that would benefit from park improvements.
-This means researching and contacting junior/amateur roller hockey associations and working with them to build courts that are mutually beneficial.
-If your city doesn't have any sort of hockey presence, they will still likely put up basketball courts. Some basketball goals use two posts. These can be a better fit for impromptu courts. If a city is already going to make improvements to a park's basketball courts, we should have ready the pros of using this kind of goal to make the court multi-purpose.
Media packets. Groups like NAH can develop simple paper and electronic publications that can be given to municipalities and potential partners that outline the benefits of this kind of development.
-This means creating an image that isn't going to scare off people. We need a family-friendly advocate that makes us a less scary group of tattooed drunks crashing everywhere.
-This means creating an image of a legitimate sport. Lots of great work is going to draft official NAH rules. Having provisions that address the safety expectations of players, can preemptively address concerns about liability. We should show that the risks we take are no greater than other mainstream sports that cities cater to.
Repeat. If your city gets a court, talk to your city officials, and request that they write letters of support for this kind of project. This kind of document can be kept in the hands of the NAH (or similar internationally), and be a part of the media packets for the future. City officials can hear from each other, and see that other cities find this kind of development has been justified.
These are just a few ideas I have, and they could use some refining. I just think that it's a good time to talk about some of these, because these are the types of thing we can do now. I believe that this sort of thing can have a cascading effect, but it requires us working together. In general these kinds of developments will help grow the sport and provide a greater degree of access. It can mean more tournaments (because more clubs would have courts), and thus a raising of the bar for us.
Ideas?
Not sure what lessons can be drawn from DC's experience, but it's probably worth putting out there:
We had a pretty decent dedicated polo spot before, with hand made boards and chainlink above. It wasn't big (100x65) but it was totally playable and a good spot. My memory isn't great as I wasn't a regular then, and played maybe twice at that location.
Through a lot of presence in town hall meetings, and talking up the positive impact a polo club would have on the area, DC polo players got a really badass new court included in the renovation plans for the park. Full dasher boards, brand new immaculate surface with lines and everything. The next year was lost to construction, but eventually they finished the new court.
Only problem is... they built the entire thing within the boundaries of the old court, the result of which was taking probably 20 feet of playable length off of both dimensions (80x50). Whereas before DC had a DIY court on the small side, we have a world class facility which is simply too small to reasonably play on.
We've since moved to some busted abandoned tennis courts across town, the playing surface being about the same size as our old court, minus the boards.
Lesson / take away? I dunno. But it probably has something to do with communication. The city shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for this court, but because they didn't ask us for input on the size it's not really useful for polo. I'm not sure who they got dimensions from... maybe it's the right size for roller hockey? Or maybe they just picked numbers out of the air. Who knows.
Like I said, I wasn't around much for that effort, and I doubt there's much else we could have done. I do not think the city would have been willing to tear down the chain link, so that boundary was firm. But I think we kinda squandered an opportunity; the city was receptive to having a purpose-built polo/roller hockey court built in the downtown area, and we failed to get a usable facility out of it... and in fact seem to have down-graded.
We did provide input and we did follow-up and we were assured that the new rink would match the footprint of Rush. It does not.
The idea of taking down the chain link to enlarge the rink was never viable, and the city was never willing to consider a full-size rink at Watkins, because it would have removed 4 basketball courts that they had already promised to upgrade, and which are heavily used.
C'mon man.
I think I was pretty clear about the fence being a firm boundary, moreso because fences are expensive than anything else. Obviously a full sized rink was out of the question, but I think they could have achieved a minimum sized rink by giving us a few more feet on the playground side - since they redid that section entirely - without compromising the basketball courts. Simply leaving less of a gap between the walls and the fence would have made a huge difference. It sounds like this is exactly what they promised, and failed to deliver.
We did provide input and we did follow-up and we were assured that the new rink would match the footprint of Rush. It does not.
My bad. Like I said, little before my time. I knew DC players played a big role in selling the idea, but didn't know how involved they got in the specification of the dimensions.
If this thread is gonna be a resource for other clubs that want to get polo facilities built, then some lessons learned from the people who were doing the legwork on the Rush project would be helpful.
the people who were doing the legwork on the Rush project
that'd be eric, and he pretty much did everything right. the city either lied or screwed up on the size, there's not much any of us could've done about it.
I fear this scenario could happen in SF. Our new court is getting squeezed in a tight space. Looks good on the plan. Construction crews can't always make the plan happen.
Last word I heard was the Arts Commission is holding up the entire project because they are unhappy with the natural light flow in the bathrooms. Seriously.
the relationships that we initiated between our parks and recreation department with other surrounding cities (lex,dayton,columbus) was in my opinion the driving factor in the success of not only obtaining our current court, but creating legitimacy with our local government. We at this point have only made input on the design and materials, the city has done the construction, maintenance, and olanning for expansion, which was obviously far more than what we first proposed. I would be glad to facilitate contact information with the city officials we have been working with. I think any club that is squatting at a current location should contact their own parks and rec dept just to see what type of help they can offer and go from there. That's my 2 cents...
when pigs fly.