Whitehorse Bike Polo hosted the second annual Barrel Sider tourney at the Riverdale rink in Whitehorse Sep. 3-4.

36 players participated, with three players aside.

12-minute games were played during the tournament.

Emily Jones of Whitehorse was participating in the tournament on Saturday.

“It’s going pretty well,” she said. “There is like, a lot of games. There’s like a lot of people who’ve come from out of town, like from Anchorage and Vancouver for the tournament, so there’s a lot of really good players, too, so I feel like I’m learning a lot from these players.”

This is Jones’ first bike polo tournament.

“I just started playing in May. I’ve just been coming out weekly to the pickup practices on Thursdays.

“I wasn’t going to play in the tournament initially, because I thought ... I wouldn’t be good enough to play in it. But then everyone was like ‘You should sign up.’ So then I did and now, here I am.”

Barrel Sider II is for players of all abilities.

“Everyone is welcome and everyone’s really encouraging,” related Jones. “Like, today ... you’re playing with different teams every time, so Ashwin (Freyne), who’s been organizing it mainly, ranks players and then tomorrow I think there’ll be more set teams but it’ll be organized so that there’s players of all abilities on each team, which is kind of cool, so today it’s getting a chance to play with different people every game.”

The action on the court went all day.

“It’s cool because you just get to play a ton of bike polo,” said Jones. “I have not played this many games before. Normally when I come on Thursdays, it’s like I play two or three games but today ... 9:30 was the first game and (it) is just going all day.”

Jones was expecting to play until about 5 p.m. on Saturday.

“We’ve got pizzas over there, so I think we’ve got food sorted out and then I think we’ll go check out some Wonder-Horse stuff later. All the people that have come from out of town are taking advantage of the weekend activities too, so we went to the art crawl last night, did a big bike mob through there, which was awesome – it was like, 20 bikes.”

Jones added “it has been really fun. There’s just lots of nice things going on this weekend.”

Following the interview, Jones took a tumble during a game but bounced right back up, with no apparent injuries.

Organizer Ashwin Freyne explained what was going on Saturday.

“We’ve got players from both local and out of town competing for a chance to win the coveted grand prize.

The grand prize consisted of special bike polo soap from Anto Yukon Soap and of course, a trophy.

Freyne said players come from all over.

“We’ve got a ton, of course, from in town but this year we have Seattle, Vancouver, Anchorage and one guy who flew in from Berlin. Dedicated.”

The 36 players in Sunday’s final competed in a double-elimination bracket.

Freyne said it was going “pretty good. Last year was the first one and we definitely noticed that players weren’t – they were learning. And this year it’s really impressive how good our locals have gotten compared to some of these traveling players that have been playing for years. It’s been exciting.”

Ashwin said he’s seen a raise in the level of play.

“Definitely. Good sportspersonship but everyone’s just more skilled on the court. It’s really fun to learn and master a new sport like this. It’s pretty cool to see people do that.”

Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

“Totally,” agreed Freyne. “Pizza Daddy is slinging pizzas, we have music, we had breakfast food this morning. It’s so important to have all that stuff available, so that people want to hang out at the court. Otherwise, they’ll just leave during the day. It’s about so much more like creating a nice community to hang out in than it is necessarily running a super tight bracket for a lot of these kinds of events. It’s worked out super well, thanks to everyone who’s helped out. The entire club really pulled together. I did so much less this year, almost nothing. Everyone else has been great.”

Freyne added “It’s been a really good collaboration with the Wonder-horse Music Festival as well. They’ve kind of supported us. It’s on the same weekend. A lot of people who came up to visit for the tournament were pretty excited to see some of those bands. So, yeah, it’s a great tie-in. A great weekend to have it.”