The Sunnyvale Sun

Cover Story

Photograph by Mark Tantrum

Goal Saver: Steve Steinberg, owner of Segway of Oakland and captain of the Oakland Junkyard Dogs, executes a back shot to clear the ball from the goal during match played Oct. 2 at Ponderosa Park in Sunnyvale.

Pony-Free Polo

ModiÞed sport is growing in worldwide appeal

By Laura Rheinheimer

Prince Charles might be aghast if he saw how his cherished sport, considered the "king of games," is being played, but this is polo Silicon Valley style: Forget the horse and get on the Segway.

That's what Stuart Moore of Willow Glen does once Sunday morning each month. Moore meets his teammates in Sunnyvale to play a high-tech version of the ancient game, the melding of a 21st- century self-balancing, battery-operated machine with a classic game that has been historically played on the private grounds of the rich and regal.

The game may be more than 2,000 years old, but Moore and his team, the Silicon Valley Aftershocks, are dedicated to this latest version of the sport, which they invented.

The players line up, ideally four-on-four, in the middle of a field, and the referee throws a 6-inch Nerf ball into the center. Far tamer than the traditional game, where a 110-mph ball is speeding toward the player, who is atop his galloping polo pony, these players lean forward on their Segways, moving at 12.5 mph after the ball, using one hand to turn, while the other hand manipulates a polo mallet.

Through trial and error, the rules and equipment in this style of play have been tweaked to find the perfect balance between the traditional sport and the personal transporter. In any case, these players are fired up and competitive as they display tricky maneuvers, block and yell.

The game started as a backyard match among friends. Moore says he knew from the first match they had hit on something new and that it would spread.

It started when Jonathan van Clute, a real estate investor and Sunnyvale resident, a member of the Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts group, had a crazy idea to use Segways for more than personal transport. "Why not play polo?" van Clute says.

Polo and Segway were a natural fit because it only requires one hand to play the sport, van Clute says.

There he asked Segway enthusiast Alex Ko, a mechanical engineer at Applied Materials, to give it a try.

"When we first started, we were crashing everywhere," Ko says.

The duo soon brought Moore and two other Segway riders along for a messy first match. It went from a casual backyard afternoon passing a ball around to a game that is gaining international popularity and the interest of high-tech gurus.

"I thought we'd play two or three times and that'd be the end of it," van Clute says.

Two years later, the men are still at it, and now the sport has its own spectators. During the summer, people show up with their lawn chairs and take it all in, Moore says.

Global appeal

Segway polo has caught on around the world; teams are popping up in such places as New Zealand, China, France and the United Arab Emirates.

Moore says much of the game's popularity is due to the attention brought by the team's most famous player, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. He started playing two months after the initial match and has since been a regular Segway polo player and enthusiast.

Wozniak frequently mentions the sport during interviews and most recently during his current iWoz book tour.

The team boasts other notable players, such as Victor Miller, who wrote the original Friday the Thirteenth movie, and headsets.com CEO Mike Faith.

The tech-savvy group posted a video on Segway Chat, a website for Segway owners and fans, which has spread quickly throughout the blogging community. Still, there was a downside to all the publicity, Moore says.

"A majority of the reaction was negative. People were like, 'Look at those dorks,' " he says.

The reaction did not stop Segway owners around the world from contacting the group to ask about rules and equipment, and soon "those dorks" had others following suit.

"There is interest," Moore says. "There are people starting to play on a semi-regular basis around the world."

There is even an extreme version of the game, "XPolo," developed in the Netherlands.

In February, the New Zealand Pole Blacks challenged Wozniak to bring the Aftershocks to the island to play in a match later dubbed the "Woz Challenge Cup." The Pole Blacks team arranged for the two teams to face off at the New Zealand Polo Open in front of a crowd of heavily pro-New Zealand people.

The Aftershocks managed to tie the game after going into overtime. Teams from other countries followed the match with interest, and next year's tournament will be held in the Bay Area, Moore says.

Then the media took notice, and the Aftershocks were taken back by the publicity.

Moore says the players were surprised, but he understands why people are interested.

"It's competitive, and we have fun," Moore says. "It's just a fun thing to do with a Segway."

Moore helps in whatever ways he can; he serves as the international contact for the game, designed the enthusiasts' group website and writes the content for the Segway polo site.

Moore doesn't anticipate the new sport will grow quickly because the equipment is expensive; a Segway costs $5,000. But to spread the word, the team travels around the Bay Area and the world to show off their skills. During Sunday games the players open the field to those interested in testing the waters.

Wozniak often brings a few extra Segways for onlookers. The extra people movers are used on a second field by beginners.

Concept sport grows

As the sport gains popularity, team members are eager to demonstrate the game or teach it to others.

The group will also pack up its Segways, mallets and Nerf balls and head to New Hampshire to play at Segway inventor Dean Kamen's house at SegFest, a gathering for Segway fans.

Moore says Segway was initially skeptical of using the invention for polo, then some of the employees played with members of the Aftershocks in last year's SegFest and the company was onboard.

Last month, the Aftershocks joined the polo community at Polo in the Park at Golden Gate Park. This was the second year of the event that promotes various offshoots of traditional game, such as bike polo.

The rules for Segway polo are adapted from bike and horse polo.

Segways have two wheels and a footpad, and players stand on the scooter and twist the left hand to steer and lean forward and backward to move. This leaves the right hand free for grasping the mallet.

Van Clute and Ko fashioned PVC pipe to create the first mallets, but after placing the first large order for custom Segway polo mallets with USA Gladiator, the polo equipment company offered the item on its website.

The group also went through different types of balls, from a soccer ball, which hurt to hit, to inflatable balls, which threw players off their machines when they ran over the ball, to finally settling on the small malleable Nerf ball.

Segways can run over the Nerf ball without causing people to fall off their machines during the surprisingly fast-paced game.

Once the men figured out the equipment and how the game was going to work, the players were then able to focus on developing the rules and strategy. Yet they never lost sight of the game's real purpose.

"It's more of an excuse to use Segways," says van Clute, acknowledging that that the rules aren't always followed.

During the game there is a lot of leaning and hitting. The team still needs to develop rules that would help reduce the collisions and fouls, van Clute says, but the game is a lot safer compared to its early versions.

Yet he admits, "It's a little more physical than people expect it to be."

There are plenty of collisions, which can result in cracked fenders and broken handlebars. The repairs are costly, and not just to the equipment.

One collision resulted in a spill so bad that Victor Miller damaged a rib.

"It hurt to laugh for a month," he says.

Because of potential injuries, Ko says, the team still doesn't allow youngsters under age 16 to play.

Like the hesitation first encountered by the Afteshocks at Kamen's SegFest, Steve Steinberg, who owns Segway of Oakland, says other dealers haven't caught on to the game yet. He sees the sport as a way to get Segway users together, to do demonstrations and promote his business.

"They don't know what they're missing," Steinberg says.