Cindy Halle: Championing the Next Generation of Polo

Step into the hidden world of collegiate and high school polo with trailblazer Cindy Hale, whose four-decade journey from college player to pioneering coach and official offers a fascinating glimpse into one of polo's most impactful yet least understood sectors.

What began as a chance encounter with polo ponies in Southern California led Cindy to UC Davis, where she helped capture four National Women's Intercollegiate Championship titles during the earliest days of women's participation in the sport. Her path eventually brought her to Maryland, where she transformed the Garrison Forest School polo program and mentored countless young players who went on to collegiate success.

The conversation illuminates the unique format of Interscholastic and Intercollegiate (II) polo, played exclusively in arenas with a revolutionary "split string" system where horses play for both competing teams. This levels the playing field and teaches players crucial adaptability skills that translate far beyond polo. With 15 men's teams, 24 women's teams, and dozens of high school programs now competing nationally, the II system has become a vital pipeline developing not just players but future leaders in the sport.

Perhaps most compelling is how II polo democratizes access to a historically exclusive sport. Students manage entire equine operations - feeding horses, maintaining facilities, fundraising, and organizing competitions - while developing deep bonds with teammates they may play alongside for years. The teamwork, responsibility, and horsemanship skills learned through these programs shape character and create lifelong polo advocates.

As Cindy reflects on her memorable moments both playing and coaching, she reveals why II polo matters: it's not just about creating professional players but teaching life lessons through sport and preserving the special bond between horse and rider that makes polo extraordinary. Whether you're a polo enthusiast or simply curious about how collegiate sports build character, this episode offers rich insights into a unique athletic experience that transforms students into leaders.

Transcript

Introduction to Outside the Boards

Speaker 1 0:02

You are listening to the Outside the Boards podcast. I'm Daniel Leary. For most of my professional career, I have worked in mainstream sports for some of the world's leading sports organizations and properties and blue chip brands, helping to create award-winning omni-channel marketing campaigns, result-driven sales strategies and impactful brand building initiatives. But all that work doesn't compare to the fun, excitement and challenges I've been fortunate to experience working for the king of all sports, polo. For nearly a decade, I've put my heart and ambition into helping advance the sport of polo. I've made lifelong friendships, met some incredible people, traveled to memorable polo destinations and heard the craziest stories. My goal is to share these people, places and stories with you and provide a unique behind-the-scenes perspective of the game that breaks all the common stereotypes, all while discussing key issues affecting the sport today and the constructive sharing of ideas, insights, solutions and best-case studies for the purpose of advancing polo globally. Every week, I will have honest conversations with polo industry leaders, enthusiasts and awe-inspiring people who make this sport great and fun to be around. I hope, through their knowledge and their unique perspectives, they will motivate and inspire you. Together, we will explore ways you can make small tweaks to boost your polo business, whether you are a club, event, team or player. That will amount to big changes in revenue, participation, attendance and exposure Saddle up. Welcome to Outside the Boards with me, daniel O'Leary. Hi everyone, daniel O'Leary here and welcome to Season 5 of the Outside the Boards podcast.

Speaker 1 1:53

On this episode of Outside the Boards, I'm honored to introduce you to a trailblazer in American polo and one of the sport's most respected figures, cindy Hale. Based in Baltimore, maryland, cindy has spent decades shaping the landscape of polo, not only as a seasoned player, but also as a pioneering coach, umpire and advocate for the game's growth across genders and generations. Cindy's journey into polo began in college, where she quickly stood out for her talent, determination and leadership on and off the field. After earning her degree from the University of California Davis and earning four National Women's Intercollegiate titles, sydney went on to break barriers in a sport historically dominated by men. She started her polo career at the time when there was just a handful of female players. She became one of the first women to hold a US Polo Association A-rated umpire certification. She attained a two-goal handicap on the grass and a three-goal rating in the arena and played in both mixed and women's polo in the US as well as in other countries.

Speaker 1 2:49

Between playing and coaching, cindy has always since dedicated herself to promoting the sport's values of fairness, safety and accessibility. As the former head coach of the esteemed Garrison Forest School Girls Polo Program and a longtime mentor within the interscholastic and intercollegiate polo circuits, cindy has helped shape the next generation of players with her steady hand and deep understanding of the game. Her legacy isn't just in the matches she's played, but in the lives she's influenced through coaching, officiating and leading by example. Off the field, Cindy remains a passionate educator and community advocate. Whether it's teaching instructional clinics, helping create a new polo program, adding her experience to coach and play in tournaments, or volunteering time on committees in the USPA, speaking on behalf of women in polo, or officiating high-level tournaments across the country, cindy has become a cornerstone of the sport's evolving story, an embodiment of progress, resilience and purpose. Her impact on polo extends well beyond her own career. She represents what's possible when talent meets grit and when leadership is backed by a genuine love for the sport and its future. So, without further ado, let's welcome Cindy Hale. Enjoy.

Meet Cindy Hale: Polo Trailblazer

Speaker 2 4:02

Enjoy. Hey, we're Rosanna and Alice, the co-founders of Line Up Polo. Before this episode starts, we wanted to introduce you to the platform we've built for the sport we love. Line Up is where modern polo comes together. For club managers, there's a powerful web platform where you can create and publish tournaments, fixtures and teams, and that info instantly appears in the Line Up app, where players, fans and organizers can see everything in one place, from live scoring and team entry to player stats and schedules. We've made it easy to run and follow Polo, whether you're organizing games or just turning up to watch. Lineup makes Polo more connected, accessible and future ready. Search for Lineup Polo on the app or Play Store to get started.

Speaker 1 4:45

Cindy Haley, how are you doing? Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 3 4:49

I'm doing well, thanks.

Speaker 1 4:56

I'm glad you're having me for this. I love talking about II Polo Wonderful, wonderful, no, it's always exciting to bring on leaders and trailblazers within the sport, and II, specifically, has been something I wanted to talk about for a number of seasons because I have a very strong passion specifically for collegiate polo and we'll get into that. But first and foremost, happy holidays. I know we are less than a week away from celebrating, so I don't know where are you spending your time right now?

Speaker 3 5:22

So I live in Maryland, in northwest of Baltimore, and actually we were getting a little snow today, which is very festive, and we have a farm out in the country. My husband he likes to ride and chase foxes and he's steeplechase raced and that kind of thing, so we're sort of in that horse country and then I have polo ponies and we have a polo club, several polo clubs within a couple hours drive.

Speaker 1 5:47

Oh my gosh. So pastures far and wide.

Speaker 3 5:50

Yes, we have things called grass, green grass, and I grew up in California so we didn't have the space and the grass and all that. So we're very fortunate to have the space.

Speaker 1 6:01

That's wonderful man. I wish I could say the same. I'm in between the downtown bustling city of Chicago and the polo fields out in Elgin and Barrington and Batavia and Oswego and what have you, which are probably 45 minute drive. Oakbrook is like 15 minutes, no traffic. Well, that's not bad. It's not too bad, but Oak Brook is a field surrounded by businesses, if you will, that's a rare sight to see, to see that much open grass in an environment like that, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 6:33

We work very hard to do land preservation around here. My husband's very active in that, but it's a job pretty much to try and keep the open space, and so I'll put in a plug for any land preservation trusts that are out there.

Speaker 1 6:46

It's a great topic to cover the folks at Batros Fields. We touched on something like that when I interviewed them last year. We talked about land preservation and how polo in itself, the amount of open land that it requires and so on and so forth is actually in a good way, not just for land preservation but the accessibility and multi-usage of the land. From a polo field it's pretty extensive.

Speaker 3 7:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1 7:11

No one really talks about that, and not to mention what goes into taking care of a field is pretty unbelievable. You know our field at Oakbrook. We always opened it up. I always see people you know when golf was not playing on it people playing catch with their dogs, playing frisbee on it and things like that. Like you can't get 13 acres of green pasture like that anywhere that I know. No, no, no, you're right, you're right, but that's. That's a really good topic to cover.

Speaker 3 7:36

Yeah, Now, first of all, I wanted to to make sure that your listeners know that we throw around the term II, but that that is interscholastic slash, intercollegiate polo. So it's a portion of the youth polo that's played, but that's quite a mouthful to say all the time. So, we will just refer to it as I-I, but for those who are not familiar with all the terms in the USPA, that's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 7:59

And to break it down even further, I usually just tell people it's college and high school. Yep, yep, even better, yep, but yeah, no, cindy, it's great to have you on and to talk about specific about this product, but I really wanted to take the opportunity for people to get to know you a little bit more and how you got into the sport. So I'd be curious as to how you got into equestrian sports and, more specifically, polo. Are you part of a dynasty family? Is this something that came upon your life on your own?

Cindy's Journey into Polo

Speaker 3 8:28

it is definitely not a dynasty. My, my mother was a, was a cellist. We were lived in subdivisions and I was that kid who would find horses within bike riding distance away and hang out there until they said, do you want to help? And then, do you want this or do you want to take a lesson? Do you want to do this? And so I was. I was that kid. I was fortunate enough to find a place when we lived in Southern California. I found a place. I was doing a lot of work for them and in exchange I they found me sail horses to show um, hunter, jumper stuff, and but when they moved across on the other side of LA I was having trouble and I could only ride on the weekends and I was really loose in the tack.

Speaker 3 9:13

And someone said, hey, there's this guy in Topanga Canyon that needs his polo ponies exercised, which was right over the hill from me, and I was like okay, so I, you know, met him and started exercising as polo ponies and then I started kind of going to some of the games at Will Rogers and helping him out and learning a little bit about it. His name was Bill Carter and it turns out he is Megan Judge's grandfather. Megan Judge runs Central Coast Polo Club and coaches Cal Poly and that's her grandfather. And he kind of took me under his wing and at the time I was already accepted to University of California Davis and he said, hey, they've got a polo club there. I was like, oh, okay. So he gave me a polo mallet and he said, here, take this with you. Okay.

Speaker 3 9:58

And I always liked sports. You know, I was reasonably athletic. I was no rock star in anything, but you know, you couldn't ride after school and do high school sports, so I had to pick and I chose the horses. So this was like, well, this might be a good mix, but I was extremely shy in college and I probably would never have found out where the polo club was, until it turns out that FD Walton of the Walton Polo Dynasty happened to be in a room down the hall in my dorm and he said you know, someone said, hey, there's this girl with a polo mallet. He introduces himself, I find out where to go, anyhow, and the next is pretty much history, because I went.

Speaker 3 10:36

It was very early, it was right when women were starting to play. There were women playing there, we had a skin field, we had a bunch of donated polo ponies. They all went in snaffles because that's all we had. As a friend of mine referred to it as a little bit of Lord of the Flies kind of aspect to it, but anyhow I just that's sort of. What happened is it was serendipity and I was just about to use that word, Cindy.

Speaker 1 11:01

like this all sounds very serendipitous. Yeah, it was the stars aligned and it was kind of meant to be.

Speaker 3 11:08

It was totally meant to be and I and because I already was a pretty strong rider and I was reasonably athletic, I picked it up pretty well and, and I will say it was also right when there weren't that many women playing and I had these great opportunities. We had amazing practices at Davis. We had, we had eight goal practices with on these, you know, ponies. We had great players that you know were two and three goals at the time and you know, as the Walton family, we had Josh Hall, who's an equine vet now, dan Harrison, who's also an equine vet, sean Cooley, peter Young, I mean Oren Connell, who's up in Wyoming, he went there and so we had these amazing.

Speaker 3 11:48

You know, no one ever taught me anything and I found out like 40 years later. My stroke is all wrong, but you know, you basically knew you were doing something. If no one was yelling at you, you weren't fouling, and so you just kind of, you know, we all kind of just figured it out and those were just, you know, college polo. You know the memories, the friends I have from playing at UC Davis. I was on the team the very first year. We sent a women's team back east and it became, you know, just so important to me and I got so much out of it and my friendships and learned so much. So that was sort of how I got started in polo. We had a and we had a lot of polo in the Northern California area and there were no other college teams at the time in California so we just would go, you know, we'd play at Menlo, we'd play at Santa Rosa, we'd play at the old Pebble Beach Club, we played during the summer. Just great opportunities.

Speaker 1 12:41

So prior to USC Davidson, you didn't really pick up a ballot before then.

Speaker 3 12:45

No no.

Speaker 3 12:46

I don't know if I'd even stick them bald maybe before I went up there, but I knew nothing and they're just you know. I know by osmosis a little bit and I was very involved with the horses and used to be in charge of taking them. The vet school at Davis is literally walking distance from where the polo ponies were at the time. Any issue, I was sort of the person that would take them over there and that ended up actually leading to my job after graduation, which is to be an equine surgery nurse at the vet school, because they all knew me and I knew the job opened up and so I did that for a few years after school and continued playing polo.

Speaker 1 13:23

In the times before UC Davis, you know, before you went there. I would assume that you were involved in other equestrian disciplines, because you were obviously had to be in a pretty decent rider before you went there, right?

Speaker 3 13:34

Yeah, I was. I was horse showing and horse showing sale horses for a barn. Yeah, I was decent. I was I wouldn't you know cleaning up at the horse shows, but I definitely had some background. So, yeah, I did hunter-jumper and I'm actually because I'm playing a little less polo these days, I actually am going back and have a little show jumper that I'm trying to campaign.

Speaker 1 13:58

So I'm sort of going back to that, because it's just fun to do something a little different. That's great, yeah, yeah, we had the week I think it was Luis Escobar who I spoke to in my last interview and we were talking about how the importance of developing someone's horsemanship skills and learning to ride and become a red rider better is only going to make you a better polo player. No-transcript.

Speaker 3 14:35

Sue Sal. I played a lot of tournaments with Sue Sally and Sunny Hale. Sunny was about 12 at the time and Sue Sal had her club in Carmel Valley, California, and had a women's tournament down there.

Speaker 1 14:43

Well, that'll make you a better player.

Speaker 3 14:45

Yeah, so I had a lot of opportunities through her Again. Susan Walton and Mary Allison Walton we used to go down to the desert I'd take a week off from my job and go to the desert and play in the Governor's Cup and a lot of them were my teammates from college.

Speaker 3 15:01

Kim Kelly was down there, but Susan Stovall, oatsy Baker now Oatsy Von Gagartard, was playing down there, so there was a really competitive group of women, but there weren't a lot of us, and so I would say that I kind of got to be a big fish in a small pond because there just weren't a billion players. I mean the growth of women's polo, it's just amazing what it is now. But we were lucky to have, you know, one tournament that was a women's tournament a year. There just weren't that many of us at the time. So we're talking, I started college in 77. So this is a long time ago and I think you know there weren't that many women players. So it was pretty much when we played on the graphs it was mostly mixed teams. Like I said, I think it was one women's tournament a year.

Speaker 1 15:46

Well, sue was at that time Sue still dressing up as.

Speaker 3 15:49

No, no, no, no, no. She was a volunteer fireman in Carmel Valley and she did get a call in the middle of a women's tournament one day and said I'll be back in a few, I'll be back in a while. Just, you know, finish the game as soon as I can and jumped into her fireman's clothes and off she went off. It was pretty, pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 16:08

But another person that was one of my teammates at college and it was Bonnie McIntosh Bonnie McGill now, who has a polo club in Northern California and has gotten the UC Davis team back together and has a high school team, and so a lot of people that sort of started at that, you know when I was playing or have continued in the sport and I think II there's a lot of. If you look at the people that are very involved, there's a lot of giving back to the sport. I think people that played college polo just got so much out of it they want to. You know they're either helping coach or they're involved in some way with their alma mater or they're helping kids nearby. So I really think it's really where everyone just gets a love for the sport.

Speaker 1 16:52

My gosh, that list of names that you just provided, that you're surrounded yourself with, is pretty amazing. You know, outside of yourself, I mean, you had some glass ceiling breakers all throughout.

Speaker 2 17:00

That made what women's polo is today.

Speaker 1 17:02

There's no question about it, Diving into collegiate polo and interscholastic polo. At that time, how many schools were participating? Let's narrow it down to collegiate.

Speaker 3 17:15

So collegiate polo had. There was one tournament, I think, in the women's division. There were, I think five teams, maybe six, and I think there might've been a few more in the men's, but that was pretty much it. It was. There were, I think, five teams, maybe six, and I think there might've been a few more in the men's, but that was pretty much it. It was. You know, yale, skidmore, virginia, cornell, and then the Western team started to sort of infiltrate that.

Speaker 3 17:35

And as far as the high school it was, the rules back then were that the polo program had to be actually a part of the high school program. So for instance, the teams were like New Mexico Military Institute, culver, I think Culver had a team back then, valley Forge, robert Louis Stevenson School, which was in Pebble Beach and that's where Mary Allison Walton played and Sean Cooley and Peter Young, and they all came from there. So the rules have sort of morphed through the years and so now a high school team just has to be affiliated with a polo club so the kids can go to different high schools. They just have to be playing through an established club. So that really opens the doors for many, many more teams. But we just have so many more young players now too, because we've grown now. So this year we have entered to play. We have, at the college level, we have 15 men's teams and we have 24 women's teams that are all planning on competing.

Speaker 1 18:36

I feel like it's switched Now. There's more women's collegiate teams than there are men.

Speaker 3 18:39

Yeah, yeah Well honestly it's, I think it's because it's easier to find women who ride. Yeah, well, honestly it's, I think it's because it's easier to find women who ride. And so when you're trying to get, especially these Division two, you know, kind of more fledgling polo clubs, student run, it's easier to sort of recruit women to. Either they're new or they didn't have the funds this year but they have polo programs that they decided not to compete. So that's the low number of 15 and 24.

Speaker 1 19:15

Now you yourself have won four National Women's Intercollegiate Championship titles.

Speaker 3 19:21

Yes, Now one of them is.

Speaker 2 19:26

I was the alternate, the first year and didn't see any action.

Speaker 3 19:27

But I was there but I still got my name on the trophy. So I sort of credit myself for three of them really, but in the books I've got four. And that was really special. It was always at Cornell. We fundraised, got back there. We used to also go and have a practice game. This is before the rules, where you couldn't have practices during the tournament, but we'd go early and we'd go get a practice game at Unadilla Polo Club, which is where Mikey Chambers and Corinne Chambers and all those guys used to play, and that was quite a scene. So it's just great. You know great memories. But what the serendipitous another serendipitous part is oh, you know who else played. I was just thinking who played in the desert, who was really good was Stacey Leary, now Stacey Galindo. She and her sister Shelly were great players when we used to go to the desert too. They were fabulous, didn't want to leave them out.

Speaker 3 20:19

But after I was out of college and I was working at the university and I used to, you know, sometimes I'd get asked to go to tournaments and so randomly I came to Maryland to play in a tournament in Lancaster, pennsylvania, and I was invited by Dan Calhoun who started the polo program at Garrison Forest School outside Baltimore. I was going to play with his daughter in this tournament and I arrived at their farm in Maryland and I thought this is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. It's green, it's, you know, you've got all this open space. It's fabulous. So I went and played the tournament and then came back the following year to play the same tournament and Dan had been thinking a little bit and they had a very part-time polo program at Garrison at the time and he was thinking, hmm, maybe we'll get this, you know, let's see what we can do to grow this program. So he took me down to the school and introduced me to the board and all that kind of stuff and offered me a job to come and coach at Garrison Forest. And luckily my boss at the university said listen to get out there and you really don't like it, come back, we'll find you a job, you know, don't sweat it. So that kind of gave me the guts, I guess, to move to the East Coast.

Speaker 3 21:30

My family's all on the West Coast and, you know, try something completely new. And then, as it turned out, the Maryland Polo Club was in its infancy at the time, so I got involved with that. My husband happened to be a neighbor of the Colohones my now husband who used to exercise his horses and ride through there in the morning, and you know. So anyhow kind of they say is, the rest is history. But I found I really enjoyed teaching when I was at the veterinary school because I was teaching the vet students how to do leg wraps and I was like, huh, I really kind of liked this teaching thing.

Speaker 3 22:04

So it was a good mix for me. And then to come east and run this program and grow it and coach these high school kids. I really kind of found my niche in that and I really enjoy coaching and teaching and seeing improvement of these kids and also feeling like you make some sort of impact on them, hopefully positive. But you set an example for them of working hard and you know good sportsmanship and good horsemanship and you know, hopefully it works out. So that's another just completely serendipity ran, all those things you know just happened to be. I showed up here and so forth and so on.

Speaker 1 22:44

Well, I'll tell you, the people that I have worked for me, that have an equestrian back yard or polar background, by far have had the best work ethic ever. No one complains about the hard work that you have to do because in their off time or as a hobby they're shoveling shit. You know they're up early in the morning, they're taking care of these animals and everything else is probably peanuts to them.

Speaker 1 23:10

So my daughter. I got her on a horse when she was, I think, six years old and, in addition to being a very good skill, I always tell people I'm like getting your kids to ride horses around early age and having to experience the barn and what it takes to work hard and the bravery. To ride a horse, let alone if you fall off and get back on, is a monster accomplishment At such a young age. To fall off a thousand pound animal, lord. I did it when I was 10 years old and I had a heart to heart talk with my then instructor who said this is a defining moment. You can either get back on the horse and ride it back to the stables or you can walk it home. And I got back on and fear went away after that moment. So that's. That's great to hear.

Speaker 1 23:56

Now I'm reading here, cindy, that your high school players have gone on to play a lot of them in college, taking on leading roles that contributed to about 14 women's intercollegiate championships. Is this a lie? What I'm reading here right now? I know, no, I mean I could.

Growth of Women's Polo

Speaker 3 24:12

Obviously Garrison Forest is a very good school, so they got on the academic side of things. They really had a great background. And I always tell parents or somebody, what about Polo scholarships and is Polo going to get my kid into school? And I mean there are a few spots that you know in certain colleges there's some advantage, but most of the time I said it just makes them a very interesting applicant. And yes, if you've got a coach at a club sport that's saying hey puts in a word for you, absolutely. But your academics have got to get you in and also it's got to be the right fit. You know, don't go to a school that you're not going to be happy at, because that's not worth it either. But a lot of these kids went on At the time, especially early on at Garrison. There weren't a lot of other high school teams so we mostly competed against the colleges so we'd go to.

Speaker 3 25:04

Cornell, we'd go to Yale, we'd go to Virginia. So those college coaches also saw my kids play at a pretty high level at the time, and also when we started out, there was just one interscholastic tournament. So boys and girls played together, mixed teams, whatever. It was still quite small with just one national tournament.

Speaker 1 25:22

Yeah.

Speaker 3 25:22

And the girls got a lot of exposure and the college coaches wanted them. But they also played a lot. I mean, you know, when it's part of the school program, part of the athletic program, they're at the barn four afternoons a week minimum.

Speaker 1 25:34

Mm-hmm, how many hours would you say that a collegiate polo player has to commit to from caring for the horses they were practicing?

Speaker 3 25:43

Well, the college programs are all a little bit different, but I know most of them are student run and so I know they have to divvy up the work. But again, if they're student run, someone's got to feed those horses. You know morning and afternoon and you split up the workload but you know you're going out there. I'd say most of these programs the kids are going out there four or five days a week per person, you know, and splitting it around and maybe every day, depending on the program. They're all just a little bit different how they're run.

Speaker 1 26:10

That is a really important factoid to mention is the fact that these are student run teams, shape or form. Was I taking care of animals, let alone waking up early, having to go to class, do it all over again, divvy up responsibilities among my teammates, and so on and so forth? And I was a collegiate athlete too. So that was about what? Three to four hours a day, from practicing to weightlifting, you name it. So this is no joke. If you're a collegiate player, there is a significant amount of commitment.

Speaker 3 26:45

Yeah, and, as I said, most of them are student run. There are a few that have paid coaches, but most of the coaches are volunteer. And even the places that the paid coaches I know at Virginia Polo those kids are expected to do all the work and carry the responsibility. And, yes, they've got direction and they've got somebody helping with the facility and all that and coaching them. I mean, lou Lopez does an amazing job, but those kids are all expected to shoulder the load and share the work and so, and the thing is is you know you want to go to the barn, that's your happy place. So you know, even if you're studying, you know you need a study break or whatever. Or maybe you've got a huge test coming up and you ask your teammates or other players hey, can you cover for me? I've got something coming up, and everyone just sort of works it out.

Speaker 1 27:35

I worked for the United States Polo Association. I fell in love with the interscholastic and intercollegiate program because I am a college sports nut, having worked in collegiate sports from television football, baseball, basketball, you name it and I want to run some of these schools down because it's really, really impressive that people would not think that some of these big time athletic schools would have polo programs in it, and I mean there's a lot of crossover between women and men here. But here's a big one UConn, yale, like Skidmore, harvard, brown, some of the Ivy League schools, university of Kentucky, university of Maryland, michigan State, michigan, virginia, georgetown, madison. So we got Wisconsin. We're going big time. Texas, tech, oklahoma State, colorado State, smu, southern Methodist, oregon State, montana State, usc, stanford, idaho. I mean these are big, big, big schools, big, big, big schools.

Speaker 1 28:44

So you know, for those of you who are listening, whether you're a polo enthusiast or intrigued or whatnot. In my opinion, reading those names, there's some excitement around it and some of these teams are incredible. I remember Sydney when I was with the USPA UConn women I believe it was UConn women. They were in the championship, they won the championship that year and the number of championships that they had was equal to, to the number of women's basketball championships that they won and no one knew it and it went viral like what. Yeah, we had this other thing that we never knew about, and I just remember going to the match and there was literally a student section cheering them on was that the era of kim simon or kim morgan and amy weishart, now Frazier and the Wisners Wisner Girls?

Speaker 3 29:39

Yeah, there was. I mean they had quite a dynasty when you get good players. That's the other thing that's really special about college polo and high school polo is, in most club polo and I'm not talking about the high goal teams, but in most club polo you know you form a team for a tournament or you form a team maybe for the summer season or something like that, but it's mixed up with people you know you're constantly changing and who you're playing with, and in college, to be able to have the same teammates for two and three years at a time, and sometimes four years, it's just so special. You know what they're going to do before they even think about doing it, and that, to me, is something that I have not found in most other areas of polo, and it's amazing is your passport to the world, which is 100%, absolutely true.

Speaker 1 30:35

You have a commonality among people and interests that not a lot of people have just given the accessibility to this sport, but once you do, it opens up your world pretty extensively. I mean, I'm not a polo player by definition, compared to you, sydney but I've had my taste where now I can just give my friends up a call in New Zealand or Australia or India and I have a mounted horse waiting for me when I go there.

Speaker 3 31:01

Yep.

Speaker 1 31:01

Yep, absolutely. I don't think any other sport has that, and I think that's one of the beauty. And not to mention playing in a collegiate setting among one of the I mean, those are lifelong friends that you're going to have for the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 31:14

Yep, yep, they totally are, and I can tell you right now that they still are my friends. And most of these I would say most of these college programs are run through club sports. So they are running through the sports clubs or through an activities. I think Cornell is the only one that's actually runs through their varsity athletics program, but everything else is sort of a club sport. You know, they have to be approved by the university, they have to follow all those rules, they have to follow all of our eligibility rules, they have to be eligible to play sports at their school.

Speaker 3 31:43

So there's a lot that goes behind just forming the club and then maintaining it and getting the horses and getting the support and maybe getting a coach or some help or you know.

Speaker 3 31:52

So it's just so complicated and those athletes that do it student athletes that do it are just so committed to it and they love it.

Speaker 3 32:02

And I would also say that we only see the varsity players that come to the tournaments and play for the most part, but there's club players that maybe just started in college and, you know, maybe are still beginners and but they are still getting something out of it and they're still supporting those programs and they're just as vital a piece of it as the varsity athletes that we see at the tournaments. We only see a bit of most of these programs and they need that depth because you need the people, you need the dues, you need all that stuff to make it work and they get very creative at ways to generate income. I know, like Texas A&M has like a free ride, that people come out and just, you know, ride horses, they do lessons, all these clubs find ways to make it work and those are good skills too. You know, those are not even the polo skills, but just figuring out how to manage a club and figuring out how to lead and how to fundraise and, you know, stay organized. I mean all those things.

Speaker 1 32:56

Running a business in a sport that historically does not make money, right exactly Now. All right, we've been a little bit naive. I just want to say we've been talking about intercollegiate polo and I guarantee their audience is thinking that they all play outdoor on beautiful grass fields and so on and so forth. So collegiate polo is a little bit different. But, that said, what format does intercollegiate play?

Speaker 3 33:24

So all intercollegiate interscholastic polo is played in the arena, at least all of our tournaments. They can practice wherever they want, but all the tournaments in the arena. Because all of this college polo really started in Northeast because they played in the arena during the winter because they couldn't get on the fields and that's a little bit how it started. I know in the Chicago Armory was a lot of that. So between the military aspect to it and the Northeast, you know Ivy League schools, kind of where it all started. But so they play in an arena. Theoretically it's 100 yards by 50 yards, but you know it can be lots of different sizes depending on what facility you have available to you. Some are indoors, some are covered, some are outdoors. But we play. So the USPA arena rules with a three-man team, the inflated ball, all the arena rules pertain.

Garrison Forest School & Coaching

Speaker 3 34:14

But really the special part and very different part about II Polo is we play what's called a split string, so every horse goes twice and it goes once for each team. So if Yale's playing Cornell, the horses that Yale plays in the first chucker, cornell will play in the third chucker and vice versa. And so the horses that Yale plays in the first chucker, cornell will play in the third chucker and vice versa. And so the horses that Yale plays in the second chucker, cornell will play in the fourth chucker. So what happens is if, ideally, if both teams if it's high school teams or college teams have their own horses and can bring them to a tournament, you would be on your own horses for half the chuckers and you'd be on their horses for half the chuckers.

Speaker 3 34:57

So it's it sort of levels the playing field yeah because it's not about who has the best horses, because the horses have to go for both sides, but what it does teach you is how to get on an unfamiliar horse and hopefully figure out how best to play it. And you have to sort of figure that out in a 30 second, one minute warmup period before the chucker. And you know the good players and teams. They know these horses, they take notes on them, you know, you watch, you watch the game before yours. If you're at a tournament and say, oh, look at that chestnut with big blaze and it's, you know that's, it's super handy, or horse is a really good bump, or that horse, might you know? Need you know two hands to stop, type of thing. So but I think that's a really important skill and it's unique to polo.

Speaker 3 35:45

That's a format that isn't used in, I think, any other parts of polo and we also have some slightly different rules for the II. We're a little stricter about horsemanship and because you're on borrowed horses, so there's a few tighter rules. And then also you're allowed to. If, let's say, I'm playing a horse, I'm not getting along with it very well, but I think that my teammate might play it better. If the ball's out of play. You can switch horses between your teammates. That's sort of a safety issue, yeah, but so anyhow, I think that's a really special part of iiPolo is the skill set you get by getting on horses that aren't yours.

Speaker 1 36:29

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Speaker 3 38:25

Yes, a lot of them are. The college programs have to. Well, the college programs have to be their own club and a lot of them are affiliated with other clubs. But the high school teams have to be affiliated with a club. Yeah, an interscholastic team. You can have more than one team from a club.

Speaker 3 38:41

So there are two divisions in a scholastic polo. There's the open division. It can be co-ed teams, boys teams, girls teams, whatever. That's the open division. Then there's the girls division which obviously is for all girls teams and a club can have. You know, if you have enough players you can have an open team and a girls team, you can have a JV team and they can still get to compete.

Speaker 3 39:05

So it's not like the colleges where you send one team to the tournaments. You have your varsity team only we have the ability to take more teams and because they play through a preliminary regional and national format, you know the weaker teams play each other to start out with Winner of. That goes to regionals where the stronger teams are have got to buy and so forth and so on. But all of them, like Houston Polo Club, has fielded great teams over the years. Midland, st Louis, hillside Polo Club those are in the central region Poway and Central Coast and the Hawaiian teams South Bay and Lakeside.

Speaker 3 39:44

And then we've got Kelly Wells and her very strong program at Moreland Farms, which is north of me, and Garrison. Both have several teams and Garrison actually also uses their facility and their horses for a couple of other teams One that's quite new called Charm City, which is run through something called City Ranch and it's kind of our version of work to ride but nothing like what Leslie does with work to ride, but it's the same concept. But yeah, there's some great and some of these high school teams are affiliated with the college teams. So, for instance, yale has a bunch of high school interscholastic teams that practice and play out of the Yale Equestrian Center where the college team is based. So that's also an aspect of the college teams that they can get income and also provide a venue and help to these high school teams provide a venue and help to these high school teams.

Speaker 1 40:40

Yeah, are there any other major differences between the intercollegiate and interscholastic in terms of its format, its rules, club affiliation, things like that?

Speaker 3 40:48

The rules are pretty much the same. The eligibility is a little different because they're college students or high school students. Every team has to have a coach or a responsible adult that's backing it, even if they don't have a real coach. Coach in the college level, they have to have an advisor or someone who's sort of overseeing the program.

Speaker 1 41:08

I love how you said responsible adults.

Speaker 3 41:10

Yeah, well, I don't know about you, but I wasn't the most responsible adult in college. I college, you know. I always think if, like if I went back to college now, I'd be really good at it, I'd like to do the reading and everything, I wouldn't be at the barn. So there's really not a whole lot of difference. I'm just trying to think. That's a question I haven't been asked, but no, it's split string format. I think the only difference is really that the interscholastic teams a club can have several interscholastic teams out of that same club, where a college has to have a women's team and a men's team and they don't have the open division.

Speaker 3 41:45

And then we formed this.

Speaker 3 41:46

We've got this new format.

Speaker 3 41:48

We started it, I think, three years ago and that's splitting the colleges into Division I and Division II, and it doesn't have anything to do with scholarships and athletic scholarships or any of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 42:02

It's really what we're trying to do is again level the playing field for the colleges or universities that just don't have that pipeline of talent coming in of players who learned in college but to not have lopsided scores and all that. So we watch all these teams in the fall, we look at the scores, we look at their handicaps, we get feedback from from coaches and from umpires and we try and take the very best teams and put them in that division one and we take four teams. We decided this year we're taking only four women's and four men's team to nationals and if there's more than that in the D1, they'll do a play-in tournament to see who gets to go to nationals. But all the Division II teams are split into their regions and they play the typical format of preliminary for the lower-seeded teams. Winner of that goes to face the ones who got to buy to regionals and then the winner of each region gets to go to nationals. So that's a little bit different between the Division I and Division II.

Speaker 1 43:01

Okay, so real quick. Then can you go through that national championship format for Division I. How does that all work? It does start with a regional and then it continues. Yeah.

Speaker 3 43:15

So for Division I there will be a play-in game. Right now it looks like we have chosen five men's teams and five women's teams at Division I Once we get more games in, because they're still playing games and these tournaments won't take place until later at the end of winter. So once we get the scores in, we'll seed them, all the scores in. We'll seed them, all the scores in. We'll seed them and the fourth and fifth place team will play each other. And it might be the week of the tournament, it might be a separate tournament, we haven't determined that yet. Then the winner of that will go on to face.

Speaker 3 43:49

But the reason we also can only take at the national tournaments for teams is at the national level we actually play a six chucker, five minute format because the level of play is much higher and also because, again, these horses are doubling. We find that the horses recover much better and we've had fewer issues with this format that they're not playing as much. So, that being said, you need three strings to do that, so that's a lot more horsepower to do that tournament. So we've tried to limit it to the cream of the crop and not start to take anything away from the D2 teams, because that's a very solid level of polo, and I'm really excited because this year we've got really good teams in all four regions, and so I'm really looking forward to the Division II national tournament because it's going to be very competitive and a pretty high level too.

Speaker 1 44:44

So remind me again how many intercollegiate women and intercollegiate men's teams are there.

Speaker 3 44:48

There's a total competing that have done all the things they're supposed to do is 15 men's teams and 24 women's teams total. That's division one and division two and five and five for men's D1 and women's D1.

Speaker 1 45:05

Okay, and then for interscholastic how many teams are there?

Speaker 3 45:08

The girls division. It looks like we've got 27 girls teams and a lot of open teams. I think it looks like we've got like 34, 35 teams open teams.

Speaker 1 45:23

Oh, wow. And what does it mean to be an open team?

Speaker 3 45:25

Open is actually you can enter an all girls team in the open division if you want to. That doesn't generally happen, so it's all male or co-ed teams. Okay, go in that open division. And it's not. We didn't. We didn't do boys and girls, because some clubs don't have three boys that can play, so they're doing a co-ed team.

Speaker 1 45:44

So what is the future of II? Are there more teams coming on? Are there more schools getting involved? You know, obviously, intercollegiate Polo has been around for longer. Interstelastic is relatively new, or organized per se.

Explaining Intercollegiate Polo Programs

Speaker 3 45:59

I would say that you know we are getting new clubs. You know usually a couple new clubs every year. This year we have University of New Hampshire and then Oregon State has come back to having a team, trinity, which is in Texas. That's been one of our newer programs. So we usually kind of get a couple new programs per year. But I think Babson's another one. That's kind of a fairly. Babson and Morehouse are pretty new collegiate teams.

Speaker 3 46:28

But I think more importantly than just getting the numbers is sort of getting them sustainable and established and having horses and having facilities and sort of. I think the sustainability is really important to us because you know you get a club but you want to keep it going and of course with a college team you get the leaders, you get the people that know what's going on and what the you know how to do everything and they graduate. So you need people coming up and constantly coming into that program. So I think the sustainability is going to be kind of our biggest goal. And that I'm just speaking for you know, kind of off the top of my head, I'm not sure the rest you know what other answers might be A little shout out to.

Speaker 3 47:12

There are three staff members that work tirelessly for II Polo, and that's Amy Frazier, emily Dewey and Allie Davidge, and they work for the USPA. They run these tournaments, they deal with all the paperwork, all the intricacies of establishing these clubs and keeping them going. And then we have a committee, a special II committee. That also we meet weekly to oversee all this stuff. Liz Brayboy is the head of that. I'm one of the co-chairs, along with Miranda Luna, and we also do programs during the summer.

Speaker 3 47:44

We do ask the expert calls, we do Zoom calls, where we discuss things that have come up during the year. It's not just the season, it's really a year-round type of program. We started the middle school league tournaments a couple of years ago and that's been a huge hit, just so the younger kids have a kind of entry-level tournament that they can get their feet wet a little bit in a fairly not intimidating format. So I think that overall it's not about the number of teams. That would be great to have more clubs, but I think we really want to make sure these clubs are healthy and established. As you probably know, there's a little bit of a horse shortage around the country, and so these colleges depend on donated horses.

Speaker 1 48:27

Yes.

Speaker 3 48:28

Or loaned horses to sustain their programs, and that's where we want to make sure that they have the facilities and the horses to be able to keep these programs going.

Speaker 1 48:38

And ditto, by the way, and I would second that in terms of the team behind II, Polo is really impressive. The commitment that they've made in developing it and, from when I was there, what I've seen it grow to now is pretty impressive. I you know, when I was with the USDA, I spoke passionately about intercollegiate and ways to bridge the gap between popular sports and something like polo that we can all relate to. Again me running down the list of all these major athletic universities.

Speaker 3 49:06

I tell you, I went and did a clinic at Oklahoma State and the football complex they have there and I was like, oh my God, it's like I've never seen anything like it. I mean, you talk about college with a lot of athletic prowess and all different things. You know Texas Tech, same thing, all these programs. It's pretty impressive. But the biggest challenge is, ok, one thing is about intercollegiate polo. It's just an amazing way to try, even if you've never played before, to try a sport at an incredibly low cost. You know you don't have to have your own anything, right, so you can go out there and you can try this sport. That's, otherwise you may never have a chance to do so. Then we make these polo players in college and then they graduate and, as you know, then you graduate and you go. Oh my God, what do I do now? How do I have a job? You know you have these years that you're just sort of figuring it out and you might be at the lower end of the ladder in a corporation or whatever, and so we don't want to lose them.

Speaker 3 50:07

We want to try and keep these collegiate graduates involved in some way. We send them something at the end of their graduation. This is how to keep in touch. Make sure you update your email. We have alumni tournaments. We try and kind of track them and encourage them to come back and help manage tournaments or volunteer you know, find a polo club near them. A great example is Raeann McGill who played. Her mom was, as I mentioned earlier, bonnie McGill, so she played in high school in Northern California, went to Colorado State, was a good standout player there. She's in agricultural, agrochemical sort of business. I hope I got that right, raeann, if you're listening.

Speaker 3 50:48

So she's now in Kansas and she has been working with Mike Carney at his club and building the arena program there and getting a horse here and a horse there and actually kind of helping build that arena program but also getting a chance to play herself. And I also would encourage that. It takes a village and I just remember so many people helping me out when I was getting started, you know, loaning me a green horse that I could play for the summer so that I had another horse to play, or asking me to play in a tournament, or giving me free stabling or whatever. It meant a lot and it was super helpful. And so I've always tried to do the same thing.

Speaker 3 51:26

And I hope that you know other players, whether you're intercollegiate or not, you know the upcoming players that you just you know, just give them a break, give them a little bit of help here and there. You know kind of the giving back part of it. That was always Danny Chiraga, who of course was ran the PTF for years and was obviously coached at Cornell and and that was always his speech at the banquets was all about giving back and you pay it forward and try and give back because someone else has given you a hand here and there, and so you try and, you know, pay it forward.

Speaker 1 51:57

And I love that continuous involvement in polo. You know, my last interview of my last season was with Chip Campbell and we talked about, you know and you mentioned also, I mean with collegiate polo. It makes it more accessible, it's more cost effective to have some of these younger kids get into the game. But even going farther than that, an imprinting polo at a younger age would increase the propensity of them picking the sport back up when they're older, when they have the discretionary income to build this as a hobby of theirs. Because we notice that there's a big break from typically 18 until 35. There is just a gigantic worth playing and now then they get back into the game.

Speaker 1 52:37

But yeah, that's imprint at an early age. That's why I got accustomed to getting back into the sport, because I rode when I was a kid. I was introduced to it when I was 10 at summer camp and fell in love with it and did it every summer for five years. So we even talked about like, how do we go to all the camps in the Northeast and in Wisconsin all boys, all girls camp and introduce polo as part of their equestrian activities up there and we are to track the next 10 to 20 years after, are we going to see them come back to the game?

Speaker 3 53:12

Yeah, that would be a good thing. We started a thing at Garrison Forest School and it really caught on, and that is at no cost. We've incorporated riding and polo and actually there's a third leg to it, which is dance into the fourth and fifth grade PE curriculum.

The Split String Format

Speaker 3 53:32

And so every fourth and fifth grader gets a week of polo, a week of riding and a week of dance and God bless the school ponies because they're so good and so patient. But maybe they'll never pick up a polo mallet again. But a lot of them go wow, this is really fun. Then they sign up for the one day a week lessons or whatever and they continue with it. But it's also just that exposure to something completely new. But you're right, pony Club, united States Pony Club would be an amazing place to try and grow it and I think it's been tried in the past and for some reason hasn't kicked off. Because in the UK Pony Club polo that's where a lot of these really good players got their start. I'm not sure why we've been not as successful in that in this country. I think that maybe the Pony Club is run differently.

Speaker 1 54:19

I'm not sure my kids are in Pony Club, but Maybe we just built a new business plan for all those collegiate athletes.

Speaker 1 54:24

If they're looking for summer jobs start a polo program at where I went to camp Red Arrow. Jobs start a polo program at where I went to camp Red Arrow or Towering Pines up in northern Wisconsin. Hey, you know, I don't mean to say it, but wealthy parents who send their kids up to an eight-week, seven-week camp, that might be something. You got the horses bring it on up. I mean, that's what I did when I was a college student. I was a camp counselor. Granted, I wasn't teaching riding, I was assistant in the riding program.

Speaker 3 54:54

But there's something in there. Let's put the pilot program together Sidney, let's do it, and I will say that also Wisconsin-Madison has a pretty competitive women's team this year, so it'll be fun to see how they do it in the regional tournament, but they've been quite competitive.

Speaker 1 55:09

Love it. You know what? I'm very proud of the Big Ten representation in intercollegiate polo, just saying, yeah, need some more teams in there, that's for sure, you know. I don't know if there was ever talk of Northwestern. Yeah, we got to talk to some of the polo clubs out here, like Las Parisas and Oswego and Barrington.

Speaker 3 55:31

Step up, come. Oswego and Barrington step up, come on, get some of these gals. A lot of the especially, I would say, in Texas and in the Western states I guess Kentucky as well. But if they're universities that have agricultural science programs, it helps a little bit because they tend to have, you know, there tends to be an equine science aspect to it or there tends to be some affiliation sometimes with those things. And obviously it also is incredibly helpful if there's a veterinary school on campus as well, because you know to get some help with taking care of them. But that's just a nice little touch.

Speaker 1 56:02

That's a very good point. So what's the future, then of II? What are some of the projects goals that you guys are looking at for the next five or 10 years?

Speaker 3 56:10

some of the projects goals that you guys are looking at for the next five or 10 years. Well, we've started a lot of new programs. There are some scholarship money that we set aside for collegiate polo players. So if you apply to it and you keep a certain GPA and you are playing polo, it kind of it's not a ton of money but it'll. It'll help you pay for your polo and help you pay you know a little bit more. So we so we've established some scholarships. The middle school program's going strong Again, trying to grow the intercollegiate programs and also increase the skill level.

Speaker 3 56:41

Ii is so much, and I could look up the mission statement, but it's not so much about creating professional polo players. They're student athletes, you know. Obviously it's most important that they achieve success academically, but also, just to me, it's all about teaching life lessons through sport, especially at the high school level. It's important to learn how to win gracefully. It's important to learn how to lose gracefully. Teamwork is incredibly important. Commitment, you know, perseverance, overcoming adversity, just all those things that you learn in any sport. And then you add an equine athlete that's doing it with you, which just I think sort of it just increases all of those attributes that you're going to learn. So I think, especially with the high school kids, that's super important, and the same thing with the colleges.

Speaker 3 57:38

But horsemanship and sportsmanship, I think, are the two huge things that we want these kids to come out of college with. There's a camaraderie, there's the, you know, feeling success and working hard and the work ethic, but we really want to stress the horsemanship. We expect very high degree of horsemanship from any of the players and we're very the umpires that do IA Polo and the coaches. We're trying to really reward good horsemanship. We have horsemanship awards at all these tournaments and also, if we see somebody who is not showing good horsemanship, even if they're just kicking a horse, that's not responding and like you know, you're like if you kick hard three times and nothing's happening, there's no point kicking six more times, right? So, yeah, they're tired, you know, or whatever, whatever reason.

Speaker 3 58:25

So we're trying to really build that horsemanship aspect and we're pretty strict with the sportsmanship thing. Again, there are sportsmanship awards. We want to reward that, but also just making sure that they really behave and we don't tolerate anything but it spills over into your regular life. Those are the things we really want to impress upon them and make sure that they come out of it with the right attitude and obviously love the game but also those things. So as far as like goals five to 10 year goals I am not probably the one to speak on that, but I think the sustainability of these clubs and improving the level of play is probably pretty key.

Speaker 1 59:09

Is there anything that you would love to do to better market collegiate or interscholastic polo?

Speaker 3 59:14

We've done some pretty good stuff. Espn's picked up the college finals, which is great. The USPA Polo Network has, you know, does, the semifinals and the finals of the collegiate games, which is also great. I'd love to get a live stream of the high school tournament as well, but you know it's tricky and it's very expensive to do it. So, trying to get just that exposure of those games, but it's such a different branch of polo and it's run so differently. So I think just getting the general US polo population to understand it a little more and realize where it is and what these kids are doing, and see if they can you know, maybe they don't even know there's a college in their town that or nearby that has a college program that they could help, they could assist, they could be involved in. And I'd also like to say the other thing that's which I didn't I forgot to mention before about all these tournaments, these high school and college tournaments is the teams all have work duties, they all have work assignments.

Speaker 3 1:00:16

So, besides the fact they need to take care of whatever string is either theirs or assigned to them, they will be hot walking horses. If they're not playing that day or if they're playing later that day they'll be hot walking. They're assigned games to hot walk. They're assigned games that they are flaggers or they chalk the field. They're responsible for tacking up all their horses, untacking them, bathing them, washing, you know, cleanly tacked. But even if you're not playing, you're helping the other teams out. And that's where a lot of the friendships actually get established between teams, not just your teammates, but you get to know the other kids on the other teams. And in high school it's really cool because they'll get to know the kids on the other teams and then they may end up going to the same college or they play against each other in college. And these friendships again, it just keeps going and going and going.

Speaker 1 1:01:04

You know how amazing it would be if the Michigan football team had to stripe their own field and clean their own equipment and everything before every game. That'd be wonderful.

Speaker 3 1:01:13

Exactly.

Speaker 1 1:01:14

Yeah, they got now pool tables and dartboards in their locker rooms. Now Come on, yeah, talk about work ethic.

Speaker 3 1:01:22

Exactly. Yeah, no, but we, they're expected to do it and they have to do it, and that's a really cool aspect of it. Actually, you know, here you've got a team. You may be playing against this team tomorrow in the finals and today, because it's the semifinals, you're taking their hot horses from them or helping them get on the horses for the next chucker. You know what I mean. So it just sort of makes it all into that, yes, you're competitive on the field, but you know, off the field you're kind of all in it for the same reason.

Speaker 1 1:01:50

On the field, but off the field you're kind of all in it for the same reason. Now, is there any goal or has anyone discussed having any outdoor collegiate or intercollegiate polo? Has that been done?

Speaker 3 1:02:01

It's actually been done. It has been done.

Speaker 3 1:02:04

We did it at UC Davis because we had a skin field and then we threw a bunch of outdated Bermuda seed on it and it grew. We had for two or three years we had what we called the outdoor intercollegiate it wasn't sanctioned or anything run by the USPA that I can remember. Cornell came out for it, cal Poly, san Luis Obispo, because they had a men's team at the time. I think we just did the men's and UC Davis and I feel like we had a fourth team one year, but obviously it took a lot of horses and but it was done. But being that the season for II Polo starts September 1 and the tournaments are pretty much finished by generally, you know, the mid-April at the latest, it is really kind of quote unquote, a fall and winter sport.

Speaker 3 1:02:54

So that's going to take the field option out of play for a good half of the country.

Speaker 3 1:03:00

Strangely enough, we don't historically have very many collegiate teams from the southeast like Florida where you think oh, there's all that polo, there we're going to get a bunch of southeast like florida, where you think, oh, there's all that polo there, where you get a bunch of, but um, you know, grass has a fatal attraction, yeah, but yeah, it's just the core of it is the arena and and uh, it and it works out really well for them. So it has been done, it has been tried, but I I've not heard any inklings of that going. I mean, we're big now, we have so many teams and so many tournaments. I mean, the statistics on the tournaments are just last year we had six women's tournaments at the college level, six men's tournaments. We had 12 open interscholastic tournaments. So if you count the prelims, regionals, and every one of those tournaments is a whole weekend. So there are some weekends there's like five tournaments going on simultaneously in different areas of the country.

Speaker 1 1:03:53

Yeah, I want to say I thought Harvard and Yale did some type of exhibition now and then. But to your point you're right, the scheduling and so on and so forth would make outdoor polo very difficult for like a regular season sort of thing. I've always been a proponent. Like, if you can do an exhibition match and like Wisconsin, michigan, you know exhibition match, and either the alumni that would come up and show up for it, there's great fundraiser opportunity, great exposure to introduce alumni to the sport in any sort of fashion. I would encourage it. Like when I was at Oak Brook, multiple times I thought about man, can I get Michigan and Wisconsin here to play an outdoor game? That'd be so fun. You know how many alumni are from Wisconsin and Michigan that reside here in Chicago Tens and thousands of them.

Speaker 3 1:04:49

Yeah, that'd be great. Some of the colleges do. I know Michigan State does a polo in the pavilion, which is they do a big benefit game. Now it is in the arena but they do a big benefit game. It's Virginia and Yale do the Harriman?

Speaker 1 1:05:03

Cup. Okay At Long.

Speaker 3 1:05:04

Island. That's a big fundraiser for them. But you also need because some of these kids, especially at some of these schools, have only played in the arena. I'm not sure you want to turn them loose on the field. So last year obviously we just had the stats from last year, but we had a total of 387 II players. Oh, that's wonderful 244 in the high school level, but we had, yeah, 387 players total with the high school and college. How?

Speaker 1 1:05:31

big of a growth has that been, let's say, in the last 10 years?

Speaker 3 1:05:34

You know, I don't know percentage-wise, but I mean I can look at it from so much, it's got to be pretty big yeah.

Speaker 3 1:05:38

Yeah, I mean it's growing and growing. Yeah, especially the interscholastic. And the interscholastic, like I said, we've changed the eligibility for a team, which has also really helped grow and allow more teams to enter, that you can have more than one team from a club. But I think I mean considering where I'm looking. You know, my view of it is starting from the beginning really, of the tournament the intercollegiate tournament's inception, pretty much, at least in the women's division, and just to see that, you know, we used to. Just there used to be one tournament period per year, one for the high school, one for the colleges, and now all these regional and preliminary.

Speaker 3 1:06:20

The fact that we have so many teams that we have to do these play-in tournaments, I mean that's a huge difference, a huge, huge difference. So I don't know the percentage, I know it's continuing to grow. And again, we're trying to get these clubs to be able to stay, because sometimes you get a club because you have some players at a university that already know how to play and they form a club and they figure out a way to practice together and they do all that. But that's like then they graduate or they leave or whatever, and then it's done. So that's the kind of club we want to really support is the homegrown ones, where they're going to get more people in it.

Speaker 1 1:06:52

That's great. Well, Cindy, I really appreciate you taking the time, but I have kind of two parting questions from our podcast, and one of them is what is your most memorable polo moment that you've had in your career? So I know this is a hard question for any polo individual.

Tournament Structure & Division System

Speaker 3 1:07:12

Oh boy, it's hard to say because it's like to try and separate it between a coaching wearing my coaching hat or my playing hat. I'd say as a player. Again, it's really hard to narrow it down. My senior year of college, winning nationals with two teammates I'd had like for three years Mary Allison Walton and Kathy Klein. That was really special and all of our parents were there at that tournament. So that was super cool. That was at Cornell. And then I'd say, as far as like any other polo would be, I won the Gerald Balding one year and that trophy has. The names on that trophy are just legendary and I was like I got my name on that trophy.

Speaker 3 1:07:49

But coaching is a funny thing. I found that, yes, some of the wins were super memorable. You know I've won as a coach. We had a one in a shootout one year. One year we were losing, losing with 30 seconds left by two goals and just because of weird things that happened, we ended up getting that into a shootout and winning it. So those are really wild, but sometimes it's just something as a coach, just as simple, as like finally, this kid masters a nearside four shot, or finally this kid is talking during a game, and I'm talking JV players, I'm not even talking to varsity players.

Speaker 3 1:08:26

But you know a JV player who was really quiet and shy and you hear them yelling out where the ball is to a teammate and you're like, oh my God, you know, like we, just we just did this, you know. So it's really hard to separate. Those are very two different experiences is doing it as a coach and as a player. So it's really hard to narrow it down. You can think of, you know, ponies that you played, you know gave their all, or best playing pony awards, I mean all those things. But I think all of it was important enough that I'm committed to being involved in different areas of USPA. Now to try and kind of again, it's the giving back thing because I enjoyed it so much and I got so much out of it. I met so many people, I played different places. Just I was so lucky to be able to do all that.

Speaker 1 1:09:11

Yeah, well, as we mentioned earlier in the podcast, your career is very, very serendipitous, very.

Speaker 3 1:09:18

Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 1:09:19

A blueprint has been mapped out for you since the day you were born.

Speaker 3 1:09:26

It sounds like it. So I have to tell you one other thing, and I know that you've spent a lot of time on this, but when we were at Davis, there was a woman who was from Argentina who came to Davis to study genetic blood typing of cattle because she worked for the Sociedad Rural in Argentina. We got to be friends with her. She saw us stick and balling on some blank university field and she invited us down three of us to go down and play with her family in Argentina. So 1979. And we went down there. We played I think one of the first women's tournaments in Argentina against four Argentine women. I think we played at Tortugas.

Speaker 3 1:10:01

But even more special is it was the year that they had the Cup of the Americas, with the US going down to play Colonel Suarez and I got to see Juan Carlos and Alfredo, harriot Horacio and Antonio Ege playing together and that was just. You know, it's just amazing. But I visited. I haven't seen this woman in decades and I was in Argentina traveling in January and got to visit with her and I hadn't seen her in like 35 years. So so that was that was really special. But again, it's just total, like randomly meet somebody and there you go.

Speaker 1 1:10:40

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. So my last question, sydney is, and this you could probably spend a whole podcast just on this question alone. What would you like to see changed about the sport?

Speaker 3 1:10:51

That's a very broad question. I would say accessibility and that's to me this is the grassroots polo, and for it to sort of shed the elitist title and all that kind of stuff. But also I'd like to see more people playing, because we seem to top out at 5,000 members a year, and I'd like to see more people being able to stay in it, and I don't know what way there is to do that. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about arena polo being a way to do that, but I think in general, just, I mean, horses are expensive, they just are, and then there's no way around that and you want to take care of them as best you know, the best possible way.

Speaker 3 1:11:36

So I don't want to cut corners that way, but just having ways where people can, can get into it and enjoy it. The you know, the way we have and I think that's that's where I polo comes in is to kind of give them a taste of it, get them to enjoy it. So hopefully they can, they can come back to it, and I it's really. You know, you can say, oh, make polo more affordable, but you've got horses involved and there's only so much you can do to do that.

Speaker 1 1:12:00

You're a hundred percent right, and you know we talked a little bit about the Netflix before. You know, we started the podcast sort of thing, and yeah, I can't emphasize enough, and even the people that I've grown with me with part of my polo career, that are not in mainstream sports my wife and what have you will flat out tell you that you're wrong. This game is way more accessible, not just to watch and experience and be a part of that lifestyle, but to ride as well. Yeah, there always is going to be elitist aspect to it. There's no way around it. But in some ways embrace it a little.

Speaker 1 1:12:35

Those are our vices in our life. Who wouldn't want to be, at the end of the day, If everyone listens to music and we're talking about Bentleys and Bling and making those Benjamins, okay. But to your point, though, when also you dive into the economics of it as well, there's no way around it. The horse is now not part of our agriculture, it's not part of our daily lives the way it was 100 years ago. Let alone how much it had an impact in military, which is how Polo was really grassroots in the US. Now it's predominantly leisure and entertainment. So therefore it's going to be a high cost.

Speaker 3 1:13:13

Yeah, there's no way. But I also think just the appreciation and that was where I wanted to see more. You know, the bond between horse and player is so incredible and I guess I'd like more people to understand that, even if they're just spectators, is just to understand more about the horsemanship. And the incredible Polo ponies to me are just amazing, especially some of the you know, the school horses that can carry around a beginner and then go and play in a varsity game type of thing. I mean, they just mentally, they're just amazing creatures and I guess I'd like just a general knowledge and, you know, just appreciation of how amazing they are.

Speaker 1 1:13:53

Yeah, you're 100% right. I don't know why we don't celebrate the horse more than we do today. Played a monster role in society, from agriculture to industry to exploratory, and I know how would we get to the explore the west, for example, without the horse? Yeah, you know it's won battles for us, so you know as much as we loved our dogs and our cats and things like that, the horses play probably a more predominant role in human society overall in general and polo has contributed to that, and people know we don't talk a lot about polo's role in military and horsemanship skills and so on and so forth, but it's gone unnoticed and I'm glad you brought that up because there's so many corners of the game.

Speaker 3 1:14:50

I think it's not even appreciate. It's so much understand what these horses do. I love watching horses at a high level do anything. It could be jumping, it could be driving competitions, cutting horses, dressage horses, I don't care. It's just amazing that these event horses, the stuff that they will jump. I mean, why do they do this for us? It's just to me it's just like it's mind boggling, and so I think just that that's where I come from is just I'm just always amazed what they will do for us and how hard they'll try for us, and so I think that would be kind of a lofty goal. But there you go.

Speaker 1 1:15:26

Yeah, hey, you have a beautiful job at the end of the day to be around these creatures 24 seven. So yeah, I appreciate. Cindy, thank you so much for joining me. I really do. I'm so glad we dived into the intercollegiate and interscholastic. For any of you who are a huge college sports fan, you know especially intercollegiate polo in the arena is really badass. Yeah, to see these kids and what they're doing on horseback is bar none amazing.

Speaker 3 1:15:58

And, I think, the finals if you caught the arena open finals that were just like last weekend. I believe that every single player in that final game was an II alumni.

Speaker 3 1:16:11

Every single player and the majority of players in that tournament were II alumni, but I believe that every single player in that final game played either high school or college, polo or both, and if anyone wants more information on any of these programs, it's all on the USPoloorg website, I think it's all under association, and then you go down to the programs and there's also a college catalog that's also online that tells you all the colleges and how to get involved in it. But, yeah, we encourage anybody that has questions to reach out to one of us so we can help you out.

Speaker 1 1:16:45

You're absolutely right. It's at wwwuspoloorg. Backslash association, backslash programs, backslash intercollegiate, interscholastic. It's there, it's there.

Speaker 3 1:16:55

It is there. Yeah, you can find it. And so you know, we we love to have new people appreciating it. Thanks so much for for having me and and to spotlight the soft spot in my heart, which is our polo. And, and you know, there's so many of us that would never be playing polo and wouldn't even be involved in this except for that. So I owe the fact that I'm still in this sport to serendipity and uh and having, you know, just being lucky and and going to the right college that happened to have the only polo program in California. So you know, there you have it.

Speaker 1 1:17:26

Absolutely Well. Thank you again, sydney. I really appreciate it. And happy holidays to you, you too, To you and your family, including your horses.

Speaker 3 1:17:35

Thank you very much, you as well.

College Polo's Growth & Challenges

Speaker 1 1:17:40

In 2012, the founders of Outside the Boards witnessed their first polo match and were stunned by the sport's beauty and brutality. Few sports, if any, have these combined qualities. The sport's grace, intensity and warlike imagery create a shock and awe viewing experience like none other. Combine this with the sport's party-like atmosphere and lifestyle and you have a recipe for success. Today, the sport has yet to witness its full potential. The industry is fragmented, riddled with politics and inexperience. Outside the Boards was purposely designed to change all that and bring clarity to the sport by introducing best practices, insights, trends and consulting services to industry stakeholders and interested brands so that they can reach their marketing potential and better navigate the sport. Whether you're a club seeking custom sponsorship and marketing solutions or simply looking for strategic advice, we encourage you to contact us today or subscribe to gain access to industry insights. Visit us at OutsideTheBoardscom or to learn more, or email us at info at OutsideTheBoardscom. Let's change the game, and that's a wrap for today's episode. Our heartfelt thanks to our season sponsor, hive 2.0, for helping bring outside the boards to life.

Speaker 1 1:19:06

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