April 13th, 2008

this looks like an AWESOME court. i can’t wait to cause splinters in my opponents’ legs at the ESPIs.

DC seems to have only 3 feet behind the goal. The Pit in NYC has about 4-5 feet if i remember right. there are obviously advantages to this, but i’m wondering what people think is the ideal.

i know everyone loves a good crash, but i’m wondering if it’s not encouraging more high speed head-on crashes into the boards. (i feel like Don Cherry in his quest for no-touch icing. )

also, while i’m not 100% against allowing goals from rebounds off the back boards, through the net, i don’t think it should be encouraged as a main strategy for scoring, and having the end boards in close would probably lead to a lot more of these “cheaper” (if entertaining to watch) goals.

good set. thanks for posting them doug.

interesting point regarding the goals. they are a little wider, and a little closer to the wall, and that has certainly contributed to a few spectacular “over the wall, into the fence” moments .

overall however, i’d say that the spacing allows more than enough room for play behind the goal, and that there isn’t any more likelihood of a “cheaper” goal.

no matter, i know you’re going to love it. see you soon.

yeah, we have the goals closer to the boards than y’all. i don’t think its ideal, but being as the court is a bit smaller than the pit, i think we were trying to space the goals as far apart as possible to maximize court space.

and crashes into the chainlink fence are a bit more forgiving than at the pit. just don’t hit one of the poles.

see you all in a few weeks.

What are your dimensions? How wide are the goalposts spaced and how far from the end boards is the goal line?

FYI at The Pit in NYC the posts are 150cm apart and the goal line is 300cm from the end boards.

kev -
im pretty sure that ben hunter is the only one, and maybe burge, who often have troubles of running into fences at hi speeds.

court looks awesome DC! see ya in a couple weeks!

our goal posts are a full bike length apart. ok, so bike lengths vary… but it works for us.

jake, ya i’m mostly looking out for the likes of joe and ben. but i know when i played at the Pit the only thing that kept me from hitting the fence at the south end was that i was riding ch0mb0’s bike with a rear brake, which allowed me to turn and slow down/skid at the same time–not my preferred setup, but it saved my ass on that one, or at least meant i didn’t have to foot-down.

Menace, you sure it’s 10 feet in NYC? looks more like 6 to me: http://flickr.com/photos/cambium-layer/2339319928/

we have a very long court in madison, maybe 200-220 feet (four tennis-court-widths). our goals are at least 15 feet from the edge–i’ll measure today and get back to y’all. i love the behind-the-net action, wrap-arounds and so on, so i guess i also like more room back there.

our goals are about 12 feet out.

I’ll ask again after some of us go out and actually play on the rush rink, but how do y’all like the knee-high boards?

What’s in those pictures is more or less what we want to build out at Garfield Park for our regular games and the NACCC’s, so I’m just wondering if there’s an issue that would make us reconsider the design.

@kev: i think there’s some parallax in that photo. doug and i measured the court before the 2007 ESPI and marked it, i’m pretty sure we put the goal lines 3m from the end boards but i’ve hit my head more than twice since then so maybe it was 2m… i’ll give it a good look at the games tonight.

in any case, more room behind the net is good, but not too much. i think i wanted 2x the goal width, which is why i’m thinking i measured it 3m out. or maybe i wanted 1,5x the length… but 200 =/= 150(1,5)… so… you know what, i don’t know. i’ll look tonight.

The real story on the goals in NYC is this, near the back wall on the far side there is a line painted from one side of the court to the other and we use that as a goal line. Whatever that distance is, from goal line to back wall, we painted a goal line matching that distance on the “hang-out” side. And it might blow a fuse for Adam to hear this but even though he and I did measure the goals to be “150 cm” we didn’t have paint with us then. The next morning I totally disregarded that shit and just went ahead and painted them spaced one bike length apart. I repeat, the goals in The Pit are not 150cm wide.

Ha that was you who painted the false lines? I always wondered! I flew to Chicago that night and came back about 30 minutes after the ESPI started that Saturday, so I had no idea how that happened. The small ‘x’ under the cones are 150cm apart, that was meant to be the inside of each post. Whose bike did you use? Any idea what the real width is? Also they’re not centered.

Also (again) now that I think about it, I think the distance between the goal line and the end boards must be 3m because I remember the distance between the end boards is 41m and the distance between the goal lines is 35m. I measured that part carefully because I wanted to know the length:width ratio of the pit (it’s really wide, even by international hockey rink standards). That red/green border on the north side that serves as the goal line happens to be 300cm from the end wall, which worked out well.

Did NYC secede from feet and inches? Or are y’all just such polo scientists that your work has to be metric to mean anything to the Nobel committee?

I learned things in metric when young and I studied math in university. I think in SI, that’s all.

Why is it that whenever I try and goad you into a little shit talking, you give me straight answers? You are no fun. No fun at all.

@lucky: sorry, I like to play more than I like to talk. I know that sounds kind of ridiculous given certain… ‘exposure’ recently. But it’s all true, I promise.