Horse, Humans and Long Hammers
By: Ritchie Rozzelle
“Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake,” Sylvester Stallone once said. Yep, Rambo is a polo player. This fact implies two basic truths about the sport: it’s fast, fun and exciting enough to entertain even the biggest action movie heroes, and there’s no stereotypical player. If Rocky Balboa is out there knocking the ball around, why not you?
Probably the biggest hurdle folks have to jump to get onto the polo field as a player or a spectator is gaining a working knowledge of the game. We’ve all seen that little guy stitched onto the breast of shirts in nice department stores, so we know at least that polo involves a horse, a person with a mallet and a ball. But how many players per team? What kind of horse performs best? And where does that ball go?
For the answer to these questions and more we turned to Lou Lopez, coach and manager of the Virginia Polo Center, the sanctioned polo club of the University of Virginia, located five miles from campus in beautiful Charlottesville, the heart of Virginia horse country. Lou has his own analogy for polo that is a little more helpful than Sly Stallone’s. “Polo is like hockey on horseback. It is a very, very fast paced game, and it is a contact sport.”
The fundamentals are fairly simple. “There are two basic types of polo,” says Lopez, who has played all of his adult life. “There’s outdoor polo or grass polo, and then there is indoor polo or arena polo. Outdoor polo is played on a grass field roughly the size of three football fields with four players on a side. Indoor polo is what we play at the college level, and that’s played on a dirt surface with three players on a side.”
The players ride “polo ponies” which confusingly are not ponies at all, but rather full-sized mounts. “We have a fair number of thoroughbreds, quarter horses and Argentinean-bred and trained crossbreds, which are sought after for their speed and agility,” Lopez says of the stock kept at the facility’s thirty-five stall barn.
The object of the game is to maneuver your horse into position to hit a polo ball—made of hard plastic for outdoor and air-inflated leather like a mini-soccer ball for indoor—toward and through a goal. This is done by striking the ball with a mallet constructed from a long flexible manau-cane shaft with a heavy nine-inch hardwood head.
Like with hockey or soccer, scoring is a matter of advancing the ball up the field and into good position for a shot. The forward players make aggressive charges at the goal and back players are more defensive. The mid-field player has to be adept at offense and defense, meaning they are generally the most skilled players and team leaders. But perhaps the most important players on the field are the horses.
“The horses are very specialized and thoroughly trained. In fact, they make up about 80% of the athletic ability of both the horse and rider total package,” says Coach Lopez. “The horse provides speed and agility getting to the ball. The rest depends on the rider’s ability to control the horse and have the hand and eye coordination to hit the ball. A good polo pony is highly sought after. So one of the biggest behind-the-scenes factors of the game is producing good polo ponies.”
Above all, Coach Lopez says that polo ponies need to be “bombproof.” This is a sport that was invented in the Middle East and Asia during the 6th century B.C. to prepare horse and rider for going into battle. “The horses have to get used to having a mallet swung past their head and ears, which I shouldn’t have to tell you is a little intimidating.” The horses also have to acclimate to the smack of the ball being struck by their feet and racing headlong toward each other for field position and a little basketball-type boxing out that it takes to give the rider room to strike the ball. “On top of all that, they need to be able to stop, turn and go on a dime, sort of like a barrel horse.”
All this training and breeding takes sweat, and the UVA students who make up his workforce come out to pitch in nearly every day. “This sport is more like a lifestyle for these kids,” says Lou. “For every hour they ride and play there’s a tremendous amount of work involved.” And for his teams, it’s work that pays off, sending UVA to the national tournament every year.
Asked one common polo misconception that future fans should know, Lou says, “Everyone thinks you hit the ball with the tips of the mallet like in croquette, but you actually strike it with the broad side, giving better control over the pass or shot.” And here’s another little-known polo fact (not true of his team of course): “Sometimes the horse can be a better polo player than its rider.”
If you live in the Charlottesville area and you’re curious to see the sport in action, you can come out to watch the Virginia Polo Club play two games on most Friday nights during the school year. Visit them online at www.vapolo.org for more info. Lou advises anyone interested in learning more about polo to visit their local collegiate or enthusiast club - for listings of clubs across America, go to www.us-polo.org.
On Southern States:
“We’re feeding 75 head here and we use Southern States Reliance?. Our Southern States Rep, Rachel Miller of the Charlottesville, Virginia store, has always been patient with us. My kids do the feeding and sometimes they don’t realize we’re running out of feed until it’s almost gone. When we do run out, Southern States will run enough over to keep the horses fed until the bulk truck comes.”
Talk the Talk:
- The head of a polo mallet is often referred to as “the cigar.”
- The game is divided up into periods called “chukkers” or “chukkas.”
- The horses available to ride during the game are called the “string.” Riders use a rested horse for each chukker. And in college play, strings are swapped between teams to keep the playing field fair.
- You are allowed to “hook” or catch the opponent’s mallet in mid-swing as long as it is done lower than the horses’ backs.
- “Riding off” is a defensive move that uses the horse to push the opponent laterally away from the ball.
- When a horse kicks the ball between the goalposts, it is called a “pony goal.” It counts, and is a real crowd pleaser.
Call-Out
University of Virginia Sweeps the National Intercollegiate Championships! Both the UVA Men and Women’s Polo Teams won titles to become the 2009 National Champions. Congratulations to the following players: Sybil Greenhalgh, Cristina Fernandez, Emily Dameron, Leah Hall, Joevy Beh, Mauricio Lopez, CB Scherer, Mauricio Diaz, Strother Scott. And congrats to Head Coach Lou Lopez and Assistant Coach LJ Lopez for leading these teams to victory!