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SADDLED UP: Wolff, Lake and
Megan Rowe, ’07, scrimmage at Woodside’s
Horse Park.
Rod Searcey |
Jonathan Olsen was saddled up
for his first horseback ride—ever. As he sorted
out the reins in his hands, the polo pony carrying him
suddenly spotted a rolling white ball and bolted off
in pursuit.
“I didn’t realize they were trained to
chase balls—or that sometimes they’ll even
kick a ball into a goal,” the senior says. “I
stayed on that day, and I kept saying to myself, ‘This
is crazy, but I like it.’ ”
A year later, Olsen can point to the quirks of each
of Stanford’s 16 polo ponies. Girlfriend is fast,
agile and responsive, but she’ll also try to nip
any horse tied near her. Riding Sugarfoot, who is sweet
but slow and can take forever to make a turn, is like
driving a tractor-trailer.
None of the four members of Stanford’s men’s
polo team had ever been on a horse until they arrived
on the Farm, eager to try something new. “Growing
up, little girls rode and little boys didn’t,”
says team captain Cary Kempston, a junior who is the
only returning player on the men’s team.
Heather Lake of the women’s team, on the other
hand, has been showing hunter/jumper horses for as long
as she can remember. But in the year she has played
polo, she has discovered that it requires an entirely
different kind of riding and animal. “It’s
definitely more aggressive, and you’re up out
of your saddle a lot more, or leaning off to the side,”
the junior says. “It’s also a rough sport,
with horses smashing into each other. Hunter/jumpers
would have nothing to do with this.”
Unlike field polo, which is played by the likes of
Britain’s Prince Charles on 11 acres of manicured
lawn, arena polo—played at 26 colleges in the
United States—takes place in a walled dirt enclosure
that is shaped like an ice hockey rink and is about
the size of a football field. Small thoroughbreds—ideally
15.2 hands—sprint, stop, turn and accelerate as
players “ride off,” bumping up against one
another to interrupt and prevent shots. They gallop
for 7 1/2 minutes at a time (compared to the two-minute
dashes of race horses), in periods known as chukkers.
Between each of a match’s four chukkers, riders
dismount for four or five minutes and walk their horses
to cool them down, then saddle up a fresh string.
Polo ponies, Lake says, “are a special kind of
horse.” Whereas most horses will tense up when
another horse approaches, polo ponies are practically
“bomb-proof,” according to Greg Wolff, a
former Cornell polo player who volunteers his time to
coach the two club teams. “You can set off a balloon
or a cap gun near them, and they’ll be, like,
‘Oh, okay,’ ” he says. Most of Stanford’s
horses have been donated by Bay Area riders who are
improving their game and moving up to younger, faster
mounts. Team members pay $200 per quarter to board,
feed, shoe and vaccinate the gift horses, and they bike
or carpool to Webb Ranch every day to exercise them.
On a recent afternoon seven players—three on
each side, plus one who rode as umpire—gathered
for a practice scrimmage in Humphries Polo Arena at
Woodside’s Horse Park. As a red-tailed hawk soared
above a California oak, Wolff yelled, “Charge
your horses!” and into the melee the six riders
plunged, with 24 spindly legs and six mallets mixing
it up for a crack at the small rubber ball. Kempston
“backed it,” standing up in his stirrups
and leaning out over the left side of his mare to hit
a reverse pass. Picking up the ball a few moments later,
he “worked it” along the arena wall, taking
short, precise shots until he hit the undefended goal.
The Cardinal polo club travels to games on the East
Coast every few years, but plays most matches against
a handful of West Coast rivals. Many of those schools
prefer to compete on the Farm, which is known for the
quality of its facilities and horses. Yes, the host
team provides the mounts. But no, it’s not nice
to give the visitors the nags to ride. So Stanford riders
and their opponents swap ponies back and forth, and
by the end of the day everyone has mastered—or
suffered—Sugarfoot’s eccentricities.
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