Grand Rapids Bike Polo hopes to plant roots at upgraded Highland Park courts

At the newly renovated Highland Park stand two freshly painted asphalt hardcourts lined with crisp white, 4-foot-tall dasher boards, lights and two goals. 

After 14 years of searching for a permanent home, the Grand Rapids Bike Polo Club (GRBP) seems to have accomplished its mission.

Bike polo matches are organized with teams of three to five players, where both sides substitute horses with personalized, touched-up bikes. The players compete atop their bikes armed with a mallet on a mission to fire the ball into the opponent's goal. 

GRBP's first home was beneath the S curve in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids in 2010. For three years, the club let it rip in the city's loud underbelly, establishing itself enough to negotiate a long-term position with the City at Belknap Park. 

From 2013 to 2020, the club flourished at Belknap Park with a healthy-sized group of around 25 people ready to play pickup every Thursday. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the club, along with most of the world, took on a low-profile status and became notably more inactive. The club was then pushed out by incoming Belknap Park pickleball court renovations, with a promise from the City to find a new location. 

In the following years, GRBP acquired nomad status as they rebounded in size with an eclectic and inclusive group of lighthearted athletes. Rolling from spot to spot, GRBP embraced the ride as they held brief homes near the skatepark at 555 Monroe Ave. and near Las Canchas on Seward Ave.

The Grand Rapids Parks, Pools and Playgrounds Millage passed by Grand Rapids voters in 2019 made way for numerous park updates and renovations, including Highland Park. Work on the park and the club's impending new home concluded in November 2023.

“We have a lot of amenities at these courts. We have lights at night so we can play polo until late at night and we have really nice surfaces and nice boards that people will 100% travel from a very far place away to experience,” said Mimi Dlugos, a prominent member of GRBP,  just weeks before the club hosted the  Slaydy Hawkins Bike Polo tournament on July 27 and 28. 

Dlugos and GRBP wanted to bring the tournament to Grand Rapids to help further establish the club and bike polo in the community. 

“I think it's a tournament that highlights WTFNB, which stands for women, trans, femme, nonbinary players. Those are the people who are making this tournament possible,” said Dlugos. “I think people really want to support that. Those are the community members who created all the teams.”

The Slaydy Hawkins Bike Polo tournament has a long history. It originated in Indianapolis and was created by two Indianapolis female polo players. 

“Then everybody kind of moved away,” Dlugos said. “I think the last year it happened was 2018 or 2019, but then obviously COVID-19 happened. Life changed. Indianapolis Bike Polo kind of disintegrated and this tournament died.”

With plans to acquire permission to host and reboot the bike polo tournament, Dlugos and Julia Wood, a fellow clubmate, contacted the original organizers.

The agreement to resurrect Slaydy Hawkins was quickly confirmed with two conditions. First, the event must happen annually. Second, the city hosting the event must rotate each year between Grand Rapids and Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the event originators now lives and operates their own respective Bike Polo league in Salt Lake City. 

With these conditions established, GRBP was permitted to conduct the Slaydy Hawkins tournament. Running all weekend long, 26 teams with players from Mexico City, Seattle and Ontario traveled to Grand Rapids for Slaydy Hawkins to compete and celebrate the sport. 

Local restaurants One Stop Coney and City Built Brewing participated in supporting the event and its players, with additional creative contributions from local artists

With a rotating clubmate count of five teams of approximately five players, GRBP hopes to grow as it continues weekly Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon pickup games and a league tournament once a month.