A young boy carefully places his feet on the platform pedals, tightens his grip on the handlebars and pushes off. The pedals go round and round. The boy grimaces in concentration. His assigned volunteer meanwhile prepares to loosen her grip on the pushing bar to let him go off on his own. For the very first time in his life, the boy is riding a bicycle by himself and without special gear. The surrounding volunteers clap and cheer.

It’s day three of the Can Bike Seattle camp, the local affiliate of national program called Lose The Training Wheels, which provides summer biking camps for individuals with disabilities.

The local camp welcomes 40 campers and teaches them to ride a conventional two-wheel bicycle and become lifelong independent riders in just five 75-minute sessions.

Nationally, the program organizes 80 camps per year and has a success rate of 85 percent.

“It’s phenomenal. It’s like watching a miracle,” said Konnie Drews, Director of Can Bike Seattle.

For a second year in a row, NW Special Families and The Down Syndrome Community partnered to bring the camp to Seattle, where, Drews said, there is a real need.

Drews, whose daughter has special needs, was introduced to Lose the Training Wheels three years ago.

“We are a cycling family, and I had this vision of family rides,” Drews, a Cascade member, recalled. She heard about the biking camps and travelled with her daughter to Portland, Oregon, for the nearest camp.

“She made more progress in one week than we had made in years,” Drews stated. “When we came back, I thought we needed one here because Seattle is such a biking community.”

The energy and the ‘can do’ attitude at the camp is contagious.
While the majority of the campers are children, there is no age limit on who qualifies for the camp as the skill they learn is life-changing at any age.“Parents are so excited about the difference it makes for their families,” Drews said. “They didn’t think it was possible.”

“Learning to ride a conventional bike builds their self-confidence and gives them a chance to be included as they can go on bike rides with their peers and family. It also gives them transportation as some of them may never drive a car,” explained Drews.

The camp’s astonishing success rate is in part due to the use of “rollerbikes”.

From the start of the camp’s first session, campers are put on two-wheel roller bikes, which have a tapered “roller” instead of a rear wheel. The rollers have a
“The bikes do a lot of the training,” Drews said. The rest of the training is in the hands of instructors and an incredible community of volunteers.wide middle surface for stabilization while the tapered edges teaches riders how to balance and lean into corner. The rollers get narrower as the student’s ability improves, and by end of the week, the student transitions to a regular bike.

It takes 60 volunteers a day to host the Can Bike Seattle camp at Magnuson Park’s Hangar 30. Drews said she was grateful for those who replied to a call for volunteers in the June and July Courier.

Among the volunteers were Rori and Andrea Hadley.

Andrea has autism and Tourette Syndrome, and prior to last summer’s camp, she had never ridden a normal bicycle before.

After successfully completed the camp, Andrea went on to compete in the Washington State Special Olympics this past June, winning silver medals in the 1k, 5k and 10k bike races. In July, she joined her family on a 26-mile bike ride.

“I really didn’t think she would have the attention to learn how to ride,” recalled mother Rori. “We are very proud.”

“This program has had such an impact on our family that we wanted to come and give back,” Rori continued.

The Hadleys are an active cycling family. Andrea’s brother Kyle and father Brent are both Cascade members and CTS ride leaders.

“Biking is a great family activity that we can now all do together despite her disabilities,” Rori said.

The grown-up on the lime-green bike, decked out with matching green wheel disks, hollers, “Three, two, one…POLO,” and two groups of three kids, facing each other across the pavement, wobble forth on their bikes. Why are they wobbling? Because they’re also carrying long mallets. They’ll use these mallets to maneuver a small ball toward goals made of orange pylons set one bike width apart.

The kids are playing bicycle polo for the first time, led by bike polo enthusiast Matt Messenger, the guy on the lime-green bike. This is day three of Cascade’s Urban Riders summer camp for ten- to thirteen-year-olds. After learning the basics of riding in traffic on Monday and whizzing around the Marymoor Park velodrome on Tuesday, the campers are now getting coached in the rules and requisite skills of polo.

They’ve learned, for example, that a hardcourt bike polo court is about the size of a tennis court and that there are two ways of using the handmade mallets, which are shaped like croquet mallets. You can shuffle the ball down the court with the wide end of the stick or shoot using the smaller surface area at the front of the mallet. You have to shoot to score. If you make a goal using the wide end of your mallet, I’m sorry—it doesn’t count.

Games are played three against three and up to five points. Put your foot on the ground during the course of play, and you’ve dabbed—as penalty you must ride a full 360 degree turn before handling the ball again.

Matt offers ample time for practice and then gets a game going, with kids rotating in and out of play. There’s a lot of toppling and crashing, lots of fumbling to get the ball. Cascade volunteer William Gerdes, on hand all week to supervise campers, says, “The most dangerous thing is when you have the ball and get excited. You go fast and lose track of where the other bikes are.” When asked about the hardest part of the game, 12-year-old Justin says, “To score!”

After a while, Matt calls out, “That was a REAL game of polo!” It’s time to break for lunch.

During the meal, Matt talks more about the game. He tells me that Seattle was the birthplace of hardcourt bike polo (as opposed to traditional, grass-field polo, developed in Ireland in 1891). About 35 people currently play in Seattle, and a team from the city placed fourth in the National Championships in Madison, Wisconsin this year. Adult games are intense, he says, with speeds up to 35 miles per hour, and skids starting from 20 miles per hour. Watch this video to see hardcourt bike polo in action.

That’s harder-core, hard-court playing than I witness from the kids, back on the pavement again after lunch. And yet their skills are definitely improving. I watch Nico, 13, shuffle the ball across the court at high speed and then adjust his mallet to score with the small end. The day’s MVP is ten-year-old Steven, also the smallest player of the bunch. Surprised to learn that he’s made eight goals that afternoon, he says, “Too bad we have to leave. That was fun!”

The day ends with a group photo and a chant: “Bike polo, bike polo, bike polo!” It sounds like most of the kids agree with Steven—bike polo is fun!