P.J. Stanley, Collegian

The University of Massachusetts has a little known secret that is worth a second glance: the women’s intercollegiate polo club.

The club, founded in 2001 practices at Stone Pony Farm, which is ten minutes from the UMass campus.

During a recent practice, five girls rode around the ring with their coach, Hilary Blythe, and their polo mallets in hand. Each girl seemed secure in her saddle, although everyone had bright red cheeks below their helmets from the frosty temperature and snowy conditions.

The actual game of polo is a foreign concept to many UMass students. It is not a typical sport that almost all students are familiar with like basketball, football, or hockey.

“Polo is an intense and athletic sport where the main goal is to score as many goals as possible in a thirty minute game divided up into four seven and a half minute chukkas,” said Sarah Ku, co-president of the team. “In my opinion, polo is a combination of horseback riding, hockey, croquet and soccer,” she said.

Polo is a more rigorous sport than some may perceive it to be and it requires many different skills and abilities to play in a game. “Polo involves speed, agility, grace, toughness, competitiveness, and no fear,” said Ku.

Jill Smith, team secretary, agrees that the sport encompasses many different skills in one, calling polo a “contact, team [and] horse sport. It is very unique.”

The girls walk, trot, and even canter (a three-beat type of gait) their horses around the ring during practice. Actual games do not begin for the polo team until later in the semester, so to prepare, the girls work out the horses.

According to Roger Booth, a rider at Stone Pony Farms, the horses have down-time from mid-December to late January and the girls need to build up the horses’ fitness by exercising them around the ring.

The first thing that the girls must do when they arrive at practice is to get the horses ready to ride.

“We arrive at the barn and begin laying out all the tack and leg wraps for the horses,” said Brett Camara, treasurer of the team. “We then have to go out into the paddocks on the farm and bring in all the horses that we will be using that day. We then have to begin grooming them and tacking them up.” Tacking up a horse includes putting on the saddle, stirrups, bridles and any other type of equipment they may need.

After the horses are all tacked up and ready to go, a typical practice begins when the team’s coach has chosen a polo pony for each girl to ride, Ku said.

“We warm up the horses and ourselves by walking, trotting, and cantering around for about 10 minutes and hit some balls around,” says Ku. “Then our coach arranges us in teams of 3 so we can scrimmage each other. The scrimmages prepare us for real game situations, too.”

The practices vary depending on weather and what kinds of exercises Blythe has in store for them that day.

“Our coach then usually has us run drills, practicing our swings and working together. We then may play a short checker, which is one quarter of a four checker game to get practice,” said Camara. “Then all the horses must be cooled out and brought back into the barn where they are un-tacked and groomed.”

After practice is over there is still much to be done.

“The girls and I then thoroughly clean the tack with soap and water and clean the tack room,” said Camara. “Before we leave, all horses must be fed and their grain buckets refilled for the morning as well as their water buckets filled.”

It is not all practices and chores, however. Once the weather warms, the game season begins.

“The team competes as often as possible. There aren’t too many universities in the New England region that have competitive teams,” said Ku. “On average we have one game a month and most of the time the games are away. We normally have games against Yale, Skidmore, Vassar, and in March we travel to Regionals which is held at Cornell University where we compete against two teams that are entered in the tournament.”

Polo is not a sport for the faint-of-heart. It is extremely competitive and the girls have to be tough to keep up in a game.

“My favorite thing about polo is the speed of the game and the swings we use to play,” said Camara. “It is a very fast paced game that allows girls to bump, turn, and get a little rough to gain a goal for their team. It takes a lot of practice with the swings but it is worth the practice to do well in a game or scrimmage.”

The girls work hard to keep their team afloat. They do what they can to manage financially, but horses do require quite a bit of funds to maintain. The team does ‘bring-ins,’ or evening chores for all the horses, for the stable in return for being able to use the horses.

“Currently their responsibilities include about 13 bring-ins a semester in addition to club dues,” said Blythe.

According to Blythe, the girls also help with riding ring maintenance by chopping ice away from the arena in the spring.

Even though the team works hard for the use of the barn’s horses, there is more to polo than simply having horses to ride.

“We are a pretty new club,” said Smith, “We haven’t been around for that long and it is difficult because we don’t get a lot of money from the school but we try really hard to fundraise.”

To join the team, the girls did not have to be experienced polo players. In fact, all it takes is a bit of horseback riding knowledge and the motivation to take part in the sport.

“As long as you have some horseback riding experience and feel comfortable in the saddle, Hillary [Blythe] takes the time to train you how to play the game as well as rules and regulations,” said Camara. “We love to train new people how to play and they as well seem to love how to learn.”

As the girls gain experience with practice and competitions they also gain camaraderie and the chance to be part of a new and often exciting club.

“This club has made me more experienced as a rider, as well as meeting great girls and having a talented coach,” Camara said.

Eden Univer can be reached at [email protected].