But T1 still loses defensive polo showdown
NoC Sports
Coolavin Park
Nick Redbeard generally out-dueled Chris Simpson in last Wednesday’s bike polo play, but Simpson got the last laugh when he pushed through a five footer amidst heavy bike traffic to secure a 5-4 victory over his arch nemesis.
Redbeard opened up the scoring for Team 1 (Redbeard, Christina Buckner, and Katie Jo Doerfler) minutes into the match after pickpocketing Team 2’s Megan “3 Street” Stanton at half court and coasting the other way for an easy put-in.
After the quick score, things settled into a defensive showdown with T2 (Simpson, Stanton, and Ben Wood) taking control of the tempo by keeping the ball out of the mallets of T1. Nine minutes into the match, T2 had built a commanding 3-1 lead after Simpson made an incredible three-quarter court shot in transition with Doerfler draped all over him.
The deficit might have finished off lesser teams, but not T1. Behind a blood curdling redneck yell from Montgomery, Alabama native Buckner, T1 marched back into contention. Redbeard stoned a slashing Simpson drive that threatened to put the match out of reach, then quickly pushed-out to himself and began racing the other way, where 3 Street waited at half court to slow him down. Redbeard had other plans, though, and performed a brilliant nutmeg through 3 Street’s tires. Without missing a crank of the pedal, he continued on past 3 Street untouched to bring T1 to within one score at 3-2.
Redbeard’s feats seemed to alarm Simpson, who a month earlier had been named MVP of the Midwest Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the time, the lanky reach-around artist was a teammate of Redbeard’s (along with Rich Lopez) on a team that placed an impressive third at the Minnesota championships. The flood of endorsements—not to mention the increased contract demands inevitably accompanying an MVP performance and what some say were vague allegations of boozing and smoking—overwhelmed the players, and so the team split up nearly as quick as it formed.
Back at Coolavin, Redbeard’s continuous stoning of Simpson—either at the goal or on approach—was beginning to wear on the Midwest MVP. Moments after Redbeard’s nutmeg goal, Simpson again found himself in a one-on-one with the bearded man-giant—this time defending a Redbeard attack on goal. Like all elite players, Simpson picked up his game by performing a skillfully executed reach around on his former teammate for a reverse-court pickpocket and uncontested score to re-cement T2s lead at 4-2.
The score provided a large enough cushion for T2 to cruise to the eventual 5-4 victory.
Notes
Next generation of womyn ball crushers on display
Perhaps sensing that things were beginning to devolve into a debased sausage grudge match after Redbeard responded to the Simpson reach-around score with a slap from half-court to bring the match to 4-3, T1’s Doerfler and Buckner teamed up for some womyn power. With Doerfler clearing the way, Buckner weaved the entire length of the court like a lead jammer in a ROCK bout, firing off a series of shots on goal as she went. The relentless assault of shots and Doerfler’s bruising clear-out tactics eventually resulted in the tying score, as Buckner, with biceps bulging, finally muscled one in from four feet out.
“There’s a ball there,” Buckner would later say during her post-game interviews, “and if I hit it enough times, it’ll have to go in at some point.”
Thought in the end she felt the sting of defeat (along with the rest of T1), it’s refreshing to see that, alongside the male rivalry of Simpson/Redbeard, female ball-crushers like Doerfler, Stanton and Buckner continue to flourish within the ranks of Lexington Bike Polo.
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