Polo!

A friend of mine, Jess, has been playing polo for a while now and has been trying to talk me into it. I finally gave it a go this evening. First, Jess had me go into the ‘hitting cage’, which is a one room building with a wooden horse in the middle of the floor. You sit on the horse, which is fully tacked, and practice hitting the ball without falling off. It allows you to figure out the mechanics of standing up in the stirrups and leaning to one side while swinging your mallet at the ball with one hand and keeping ahold of the reins with the other. It’s actually not that hard to figure out how to juggle all of that, if you already know how to ride and have decent balance and leg strength. The hard part is actually making contact with the ball and when you do, getting the swing right so that you get good distance and accuracy, and all without hitting your horse.

The way the practice clinic runs, each person gets to go in every other chukkah. A chukkah is a 7-minute round of play. In a real game, the same 8 players would play 6 chukkas, but at the clinic, we don’t keep score or play actual games. I got to go in for 2 chukkahs. As I was mounting the first horse, I realized that they use double reins, which I have never used before. The wooden horse in the hitting cage had only had a single rein bridle on it. So, add that to the list of things to juggle! Then, as I’m walking him to the arena, it occurs to me that these are trotting horses! Ugh! That first horse I rode was super lazy and all he wanted to do was trot! Despite the fact that I’ve only ever tried posting once in my life for a few minutes, I winged it. His trot actually wasn’t that bad and sitting it was fine, but I posted it here and there anyway, as I felt it helped me keep in better sync with his movement, which is important, when your turning wildly back and forth and running after the ball. About halfway through the chukkah, the horse realized that I wasn’t going to let him get away with just trotting and wasn’t going to relent on kicking until he cantered. After that, he cantered around pretty easily for me. It was much more exciting to play when your horse actually runs with the group and the ball. I had about 4 or 5 chances to make a shot on the ball that chukkah and I missed every time but one. I made a good hit that one time though, and it a backwards shot and on the left side, which is the hard side, since you hold the mallet in your right hand.

The second chukkah that I rode in, I got another horse who just wanted to trot. However, this horse had a huge trot and it was launching me out of the saddle. Having ridden a gaited horse for the past 8 years, I was totally unprepared to sit a trot that big. I couldn’t keep my balance well enough to actually try and swing at anything, but people were barking at me to make attempts anyway. Ack! When I tried to kick the horse up into a canter, he would just trot faster and faster, making it even worse, such that I’d have to slow him back down to a walk to get my balance back. I posted his trot when I could, but being unexperienced at it, it was hard to keep on rhythm when he’d speed it up in my attempts to make him canter. Again, about halfway through the chukkah, he realized that I wasn’t going to stop kicking until he cantered and he gave in. Like the previous horse, he cantered for me without trouble after that. In fact, this horse was pretty happy to give chase from then on, kicking up into a lively canter whenever asked. I didn’t get any good hits that chukkah. I didn’t get too many shots to hit the ball, and when I did, I made contact as much as I missed, but never got any great hits. Overall, it was really fun, and I’d love to do it regularly, but the cost is $400 per month. I definitely feel like I’ve been bitten by the polo bug, but I just don’t know if I can afford that.