UVA’s longtime polo coach rides off into the sunset

Lopez said his approach was to offer guidance, not to issue orders.

“As a coach, I wasn’t here to run a drill sergeant-type program,” he said. “I let the kids get involved in a lot of the decision-making, up to a point where I would see them headed in the wrong direction.”

Lopez has stayed close with many of his former players and their families, and even their children.

“Polo is a family for me,” he said.

Part of the family experience was hard work. Lopez said some of the players arrived as riders with no barn experience, unable to tack up or care for their horses. He put them to work on the entire package.

“One father, when he came to visit the first time, said his boys were really spoiled,” Lopez said. “And then he came in the barn and saw his son up in the hay loft, throwing down bales of hay. He ran out to the car to get his camera to take pictures of it. He said, ‘My wife won’t believe that you’ve got him throwing bales of hay.’”

The polo club relies on dues and donations. Families and alumni have been generous, including donating the Beh House, the two-story clubhouse that provides players with a place to relax, study and socialize. Three sons of the Beh family, of Malaysia, went through the polo program, and the family donated the clubhouse, built in 2016.

Lopez, raised on Long Island, New York, is an unlikely candidate to have a polo career.

“Horses were a passion of mine,” he said. “I didn’t come from a wealthy family that could afford a farm and horses. I had to make it happen on my own. There were a couple of horse farms not far away, and I could ride my bicycle to them when I was in high school.”

Working on a farm, Lopez became friends with the owner’s son. Together, they went to a polo clinic at Yale University. After that, the farm’s owner bought the boys some polo ponies to work with.

When Lopez attended Colorado State University with the intent of becoming a veterinarian, he brought his love of polo with him.

Lopez coaches polo from horseback as he works to foster camaraderie and leadership among the players. (Contributed photo)

“They didn’t have a polo program there, so I put an ad in the school newspaper for any other polo players or students interested in polo, and I got a whole big group that came out,” Lopez said. “Pretty much everything I did from that point on was directed toward horses, one way or another.”

Lopez never became a veterinarian. He graduated instead with a degree in teaching vocational agriculture. He took his first job in Southington, Connecticut, a half hour from Yale, where he then worked as a part-time polo coach. With the help of a Yale graduate, he expanded it into a year-round program. 

“I spent four years there and actually ended up winning a national title against UVA,” he said.

Lopez went to Palm Beach Polo and then back to be the polo professional at the Oxbridge Hunt Club in Darien, Connecticut. Later, he returned to teaching in the city to support his family. When his oldest son was playing polo at UVA, Lopez came to Charlottesville to watch him play.

“The coach at the time was Dana Fortugno,” Lopez said. “I knew him very well, and he told me he was going to leave and that this would be a good opportunity for me.”

Fortugno was proven right. 

Although he won’t be coaching the team any longer, Lopez plans to help from the sidelines.

“This has been my home for 23 years, and I’ll do anything I can do to help continue the trajectory upward, whether it be through facilitating horse donations or helping to support the program by soliciting funds,” Lopez said.