Hoos and Hooves: Virginia Polo Turns 70

The polo team left its first field in 1970, moving to the Farmington Hunt Club on Garth Road, near the site of Foxfield Races, where they played until Rodger Rinehart, a local businessman and polo enthusiast, and alumnus Dick Riemenschneider secured a donation of land for the club southwest of Charlottesville at Forest Lodge off Old Lynchburg Road, in 1980.

“My dad, Dick Riemenschneider and Dan Colhoun made it their mission to get that new home,” said Robert Rinehart, who played polo while an economics student at UVA, graduating in 1974. “It was a great threesome: My dad was a great promoter of the polo club; Dick, an attorney, to handle the legalities; and Dan, an engineer, to oversee the facilities construction.”

As the University went coed, so did the polo team. The men’s team made it to the National Intercollegiate finals in 1971 and the women reached their first final in 1976. UVA developed a reputation for polo, and the men’s team won its first national championship in 1987, following up with 12 more. The women won the first of their 10 titles in 1990.

The Virginia Polo Club is separated into tiers of talent. The top rung is the varsity, currently the reigning collegiate champs; the club team, which competes against other club teams; and the newest recruits, who enter through the 10-week boot camp.

It All Begins in Boot Camp

Tim Brown, a third-year finance and management major in the McIntire School of Commerce, works with a horse in the indoor arena at the Virginia Polo Club. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

On a recent late-winter day, Jenny Germroth crouched under Pantera, an Appaloosa, showing boot camper Tim Brown how to wrap a stretchy blue fleece around the horse’s leg between the knee and the pastern, the sloped part of a horse’s leg just above the hoof. The wrap is a layer of protection for the horse. Many of the rules and traditions in polo focus on protecting the horses.

Then Brown, a former surgical technician, performed one of the best leg wraps Germroth had ever seen from a brand-new player. It was the second week of spring polo club boot camp, and Brown was one of the neophytes.

“This is part of the UVA experience,” said Brown, a third-year finance and management major in UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce. “The first time I ever rode a horse was last week at the interest meeting.”

Once Pantera’s legs were wrapped, Germroth, a veteran polo player and the development coordinator for Virginia Polo, showed Brown how to brush the horse, clean its hooves and put on its bridle and saddle. Finally, she demonstrated how to braid the horse’s tail.

Brown, a Navy veteran who worked at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is open to new experiences. He was one of nine newbies who showed up for the boot camp, where campers are taught how to care for the horses and learn the fundamentals of polo. Most boot campers have riding experience; Brown was an exception.

The campers crowned their morning by slowly riding horses around the indoor arena. Once comfortable, they were given mallets to practice hitting a polo ball. A cadre of older club members stood facing outward watching the various campers and calling out pointers, sometimes running up to the rider to make an adjustment in the tack or how he or she was mounted.

After Boot Camp, the Club Team Awaits

The teams practice several times a week. The members of the club team spread out in the outdoor arena, smiling and chatting as they prepare to mix it up in practice. In the arena, they pay attention to how the horses act and react. The team members are in-the-moment concentrated, forgetting schoolwork, friends, problems. They are offline, connected only with their horses, focusing on their riding and mallet work.

Club team member Shang Ruan, 29, from Shenzhen, China, did not start riding until she was 27. She saw one polo match at the Myopia Polo Club in Hamilton, Massachusetts, the summer before she entered the Darden School of Business.

“I immediately knew that this is it,” she said. “I am fascinated by the fast-paced and team-oriented nature between all the two-legged and four-legged players.”

Ruan, who said she has learned a lot about tending horses, gets support and encouragement from her teammates.

“Being the least-experienced team member and a competitive person in nature, I sometimes walk out of practice feeling like crap,” Ruan said. “But whenever I share my negative feelings, my teammates would always tell me that we are all here to learn and have fun with ponies and people.”

Ruan, who wants to be an investment banker, thinks polo helps keep her grounded.

“Heading out to the financial service industry and surrounded by the scope of business challenges we try to solve every day at Darden can easily inflate one’s ego,” Ruan said. “Being here at UVA Polo reminds me that constant work and uncertainty are the norm of life.”

The Final Destination: Varsity

Both the men’s and women’s varsity squads earned national intercollegiate championships again last year.

Parker Pearce, captain of the men’s varsity and co-president of the Virginia Polo Club, said that though polo takes up a large portion of his life, it is worth it. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Parker Pearce of Monkton, Maryland, is captain of the men’s varsity team and co-president of the club. He first came to UVA as a summer polo camp participant in middle school, and the polo team was key to his decision to come to UVA, and eventually the McIntire School of Commerce. Pearce said he enjoys the connection between the rider and horse.

“It’s not like any other sport, where you show up and you practice for two hours and you go to the gym and that’s your three hours a day,” Pearce said. “With us, it’s a much bigger time commitment, because we are responsible for the horses. It’s almost your entire life, once you commit to it – sometimes six to seven hours a day, and trying to do that while also working a part-time job and doing school at the same time definitely gets challenging. But it’s worth it in the end.”

Pearce was a member of last year’s national championship team, an achievement he shared with teammates Brennan Wells and Jack McLean. They’re also friends with whom he’s played polo since the eighth grade.

For Pearce, becoming a national champion linked him with part of his family’s past.

“Another part of it that made it really, really special to me, was this past year was the 100th anniversary of the tournament,” he said. “And 100 years ago, my great-grandfather won the first ever national collegiate championship for Princeton as the captain.”

On the field, Pearce focuses on the match and ignores the pressure.

“Playing, going for the ball, getting that aggression and that motivation is a big part of it,” he said. “As captain, I have to focus on the welfare of our horses and making sure that everyone’s going well and that no one has gotten injured throughout the whole game. And lastly, it’s trying to direct everyone as best I can and communicate the whole time. The hardest part all the time is making sure that everyone’s communicating.”

Katie Define of Charlottesville, captain of the women’s team and treasurer of the club, began riding horses at 3 years old. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Katie Define of Charlottesville, captain of the women’s team and treasurer of the club, started riding when she was 3. Before college, she worked at the King Family Vineyard, which hosts the Roseland Polo Club. It’s where she learned the polo basics.

“Polo combines a lot of my passions together, primarily horses and being on a team, so when I realized it was an opportunity at UVA, I was excited to even get to try it,” Define said.

“Being on UVA’s championship women’s team brings such feelings of accomplishment, pride, happiness and gratitude,” she said. “I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to play polo at UVA and to do so at such a high level because of the talent of the horses we have and the teammates I play with.”

To Define, a computer science major, the team is more than athletic accomplishment.

“I have made some lifelong friends, both in my teammates and competitors,” she said. “I have taken on responsibilities that have pushed me to grow as an individual, and I have also learned a lot about myself. Overall, I love being on the polo team and I can’t imagine my college experience without it.”

Define does not begrudge the sacrifices that polo requires, but she keeps polo and her student life separate.

“It helps me have a better attitude and understanding of the sport,” Define said. “Having this separation means when I have a bad practice, I can leave it at the barn and not take it home with me, or when I have a bad day at school, I can leave that behind when I go play polo. It also helps me recognize my individuality as a person outside of being an athlete, which I think will be incredibly helpful when I graduate college this spring.”

From Modest Beginnings to National Acclaim

The Virginia Polo Club is self-run and self-supporting, funded by members’ dues, donations and advertising revenue from its annual magazine. During the 1950s, when UVA was still all-male, polo matches were a social occasion.

“Polo Sundays were huge in Charlottesville and for UVA students, and it was intentional,” Germroth said. “Dick Riemenschneider did publicity for the games. The UVA guys would have girls visit for the weekend and have plenty to do on Saturdays, but there were no Sunday activities. The polo guys decided to make polo the Sunday date activity.”

Samuel “Pete” Anderson, former architect for the University, recalls how attendees brought their own food and drink, tailgate-style. Anderson remembers it as a few dozen cars and station wagons pulled up along one side of the field, and a lot of people strolling around.

“Charlottesville and the University were both much smaller at the time, and many of the townspeople and students loved to attend the polo matches,” Germroth said.

The club has a small staff. Lou Lopez, the longtime coach and general manager, performs farm duties – maintaining equipment and fences, mowing, securing horse donations and ensuring students have done the necessary paperwork with UVA and United States Polo Association to compete. He also calls the action on the PA system and grooms the playing surface between matches.

Lopez started playing polo at 15 and was the polo coach at Yale University in the 1980s. He came to Virginia Polo in 2003, attracted by the facilities and resources. He’s guided the team to 11 national titles – six for the women’s team and five for the men’s.

“Men’s polo is a bit more physical and quite aggressive,” he said. “Women’s polo is more classical and cerebral. The relationship between the horse and rider plays a significant role for women.”

Elka Sterling, assistant coach and barn manager, oversees students’ care of the ponies, coordinating with the veterinarian and the farrier who trims hooves and shoes the horses. She performs basic veterinary care, coaches the club and high school teams, and teaches in the boot camp.

Like Lopez, players tend to get hooked on the sport and stick with it a long time.

“What all of us who have played polo at UVA know is that it is the most fantastic, addictive game in the world,” Rinehart said. “You have a horse and rider as one, you have hand-and-eye coordination, you have speed, you have a degree of physicality in ride-offs, and you have teamwork and longevity because you can play for a very long time.”

For Rinehart, the relationship extends beyond the competition.

“In addition to the game, there is that wholesome relationship with the horses,” Rinehart said. “They are such cool individuals and polo ponies are such wonderful athletes in their own right. To work with a horse, there can be no other distractions and it seems to just free one’s brain from all the clutter outside the barn or arena. This does not change.”