Main Street, Wyoming; 402; Polo in the Big Horns

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy proud to be a part of Wyoming spirit you're in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities and ridging lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas. It's almost time for the first trucker. I've been working on the outside arc and stroke.

But I'm kind of a beginner at this. Let's go watch the big boys and girls play. It's an improbable sight isn't it. Here on a beautiful swath of green at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains people are swatting at a waxy board with mallets enjoying a sport it's generally perceived as a specialty of the British aristocracy like cricket or fox hunting.

But. We'll get to the why of it in a minute. But first we better learn some of the how of it from Big Horn horse breeder Mike Morton. When you have four positions on a team and they were number one through four. One is the aggressive player the cherry picker sort a lot as you speak in basketball and that ball goes up he turns for the other team's basket. He too is a kamikaze sort of speak. And he. He has to be on the ball at all times he's following the ball and marking the best player on the other team by the nature of his position. The number three is generally the captain the best player on the team the quarterback is usually the biggest hitter to the guy that hits a golf ball 350 yards is the number three in pole. The back is like a defenseman in hockey. He can go on all fans but his job is defense.

Listen there's numerous rules I think two of rules number up to 35 in our official book and I probably don't know more than three quarters off. But for example you can't bump with your shoulder which you can bump with. You can bump with your shoulder but you can't have your elbow out obvious if you're running 35 miles an hour and you come in like this you hit somebody in the temple you're going to knock him out. The arm has to be down with your shoulder. Some people bump with their

heads. Also on the horses when they crowd or bump another horse you cannot. The rules say you have to straight it straight now straight now before you bump. You can hit 90 degrees or 45 degrees. You have to make every effort to straight now and bump. The A.

Yahoo. This is a English tack. This particular is a gag bit with two reins drop nose band a Martin gale or a tied down fresco or a few English saddle with no knee rolls over girth and down here we have the four legs bandaged with bell boots to

protect their pastor. And we do their tail up. So the mallet doesn't become Tang tangled in the in the tale as far as equipment for the player. He wear high boots Nygaard wristbands or elbow wraps are optional and a helmet so there's not much protection for the player. I have a helmet here I'll show you. This is mandatory you have to wear a helmet in the rules a polo Actually there is no requirement for tack. But this is the standard equipment on a pole horse used to range because you take the pressure off the horse's mouth a better distributed with two reins and one way.

To keep time. You. Know. You want a horse it's like in football you'd want a wide receiver. You don't want to tackle playing a sport or a guard or a nose tackle. You want a wide receiver or the split end or a half back. They're the ones who play the game call a lot of people referred to it is hockey on horseback or chest on horseback. Is it depending where you are. It is a thinking man's game. Most people think I'm Paul. If this helmet represented the ball that you're

headed this way or this way that is wrong. You hit it this way or this way with the flat part of the mallet. This mare is a little keyed up because you know she's playing the day. Also if you see the mallet it's at an angle and that's because it's designed when you're on horseback. If you turn it this way you can hit the ball but look what happens when you turn it this way. You're right in the thick surface of the ground. You want to hit the ball right here which we call the sweet spot. I'll get on and show you a few shots. You're never trapped when you play polo. It's always slow feet are running.

This is the. This is the offside in polo. This is a new year so. There are four shots for a corner and you hit off. The offside for the offside back. The near side forehand and a near side. That basically. Is. And there's variations off of every corner. There's also the next shot we call this a millionnaire shot the belly shot. The reason you get into the legs you have to be a millionaire to replace old horse. Polo is one of the world's oldest games dating back to the time of Alexander the Great in

Persia about the fourth century B.C. and possibly longer. It was called shotgun in ancient times and it spread across continents until it was taken up by the horse loving world tribes of India in the 16th century. The British who were taking quite a number of things out of India in the 19th century to occur as well. British military units began to knock around a little ball with you know it's on horseback and you name it it became a favorite sport there as it continues to be to this day. But that doesn't explain what we're doing playing polo here in Wyoming. We're roping them. This is one more problem with your slide back it will be. Very good. I think they came here because the Wallops came here for miles that he Montana and because they had learned to play polo from a colonel who was retired for the 9th Lancers in England and was then residing in Miles City Montana they thought it would be good sport to start it here. And of course Malcolm

Moncrief came two years after Henry Oliver Wallach came and when he came there were then two of them interest in another and they started it. The history of polo and sharing. Really doesn't date back just to the Moncrieff Polo ranch because originally the polo field was where Charlie whitens A feels are now the only way it was moved was the 900 No 1 1 Malcolm Andris built the house where the old pole field is and set up a polo club. So since 1894 Polo has been going strong except for World War 2 they didn't stop in World War 1. They just played cowboy polo. Older Man played it. Man over 50 over the draft age that was to be. But in 42 and 43 they quit playing. And then they started after the war again.

Well it started with the Boer War. My grandfather and his brother in law a man I called Uncle Malcolm Malcolm Moncrief were purchasing horses for the British army for the Boer War. They would ride from the ranch in Big Horn up to Miles City and put together a little band the Cowboys and ride westward to the eastern edge of the Coast Range Washington and Oregon buying horses. Then they'd trail him back to the ranch for the British guys to the BiOM and the British criteria was that the horses would be sound and that they would by their mouth be eight years old or less and that you could ride them the length of a polo field. So I gather that it didn't matter the nature of the ride so long as you got it off and on it here and often there.

But in the mean time. When the British army officers would come they had a polo field and there were the cavalry post for the time Fort Robinson Fort Warren Fort Riley a number of them around and so they began to come up here and to meet and play polo while this horse buying thing was going on. It's a deadly those horses that were purchased were trailed back to my own city. And put on a train to Duluth put onto a freighter and through the Great Lakes and down to South Africa and I have talked with the current President de Klerk and those horses are there in the stands obviously you know are still pretty famous and declared Tommy said I thought probably a number of my ancestors killed a good many of those horses and I said well if they're the ancestors that I think they were they probably stole a

good many Marxists in it and but that at any rate the local Cowboys. Became. Expert. Polo player from them cavalry officers and others and so that's how it came to be the. Until a few years ago all of the polls we would have polar rants Mozilla's polo field in America. I think the transition came in 85 when we moved from what was then the old polo field. Where we had that one regulation size field over to the Big Horn equestrian center where we have three regulation fields that can be interchanged north south east west as field conditions indicate. And I think this generated interest from the people at least in the Denver area. They started to come in first and then peer. And. Places in the Seattle came and by 87 we were getting people from all over the country when they saw the kind of horses that we raised then they began to

buy the horses back. There there's a certain group of moneyed people who go the circuit they go to Bondi Beach in the energy. I'm in Indio California and they come to places like this in the summer and. We have men like Oakley. Foreigners who come here from Millbrook New York. He inherited his aunt's place up there. His wife is into this he asked Dick about horses he took out polo in his 50s I've known him for 40 years. But he comes here because it's good fun. He's not having to play with high gold polo players all the time. But there are enough high gold polo players to make it interesting because a couple take seriously do not want to swap for five years I've been on that circuit in my circuit has been

playing in Palm Beach during the rain during the winter which is true. Now arch are usually going to either Argentina or Australia for April and then going to England for the summer for May June July and the last two years I've played August in France in between then in the fall and in the spring sometimes are occasional trips to countries like Malaysia which puts on a tournament and of beginning of September. I went to New Zealand one time but the big seasons would be Argentina in our fall which is their spring Palm Beach in the winter our winter and England right now is probably the biggest season of all which is May June July. There's three or four clubs over there within an hour of London and there's about 22 high school teams in that hole over there. Explain to us the polo handicap system how it works. It's 0 to 10 or minus 1 to 10 beginner players are rated minus one it has nothing to do with the number of goals a player scores. It's

more just some of their contribution to the team both defensive and off fanciful and you know others. That's how it works it's I compare it to sort of a Pro-Am Golf Tournament where there's a scratch golfer the professional player with an amateur who has a handicap on the whole works in reverse that the higher the handicap. Better plan. Is it. Is it a rarity for American polo player to have a handicap like yours. There's no there's 110 in 1 9 in good cinema right now. All right handicap player arrive during Don King games on Labor Day weekend. It's a three day event that utters the noun chair the saddle maker. The interesting thing about Don King

days is that it mixes polo playing with the kind of cowboy action you expect and why only get away. Yes there is no fight. It's good to be everybody to get what your day. Off. Because after that I feel what I feel for you I get to fly far in a lot of money all the right now or ever get. A little trouble like that here and there yourself. Well you see a lot of intersections a lot of people who do both. I'm always have when I when when I was a youngster here at the end of World War in two and they started Polo up again but it was pretty promising except that a lot of young people who might have played polo or were roping it was the kind of fashion the rules are more fashionable the rope the fly pro-Gore and the end of time and then writing career came along with all of the youngsters

that were in the country were were gone there were no Roper's one and polo player and I restarted that after I got back from the army and by that time. It became obvious to everybody that that. That doing damn good things I'm damn glad Horace was somewhat was all right for everybody and there wasn't a conflict between roping and polo on. And they you know I've played here and worked to keep it going until in the middle 70s and then others picked it up and have carried a nonsense and it's grown and grown and I'm dunking days is as good an equestrian event does exist anywhere in America. Malcolm Wallop doesn't play polo anymore because of the expense and because he doesn't think the people of Wyoming would appreciate him playing polo in Washington. There is an image problem that comes

with the uncle a few years back the graduate student at the University of Wyoming wrote a thesis in which he described the polo playing Lincoln men who were crowded Big Horn. Describing their English saddles fancy masquerade balls butlers maids and hints of Lifestyles of the rich and famous like good anthropology. It went on to describe the creationists of big oil and coal oil. Oh never mind. But his feelings about Leghorn Paulo are not mine. We are not a mink and man or group. It's true that most of the ranchers who play polo have been successful ranchers but that doesn't make them millionaires or multimillionaires either I don't think the one glowing question which he seemed to feel was important was that we all know exactly what day Polo started in 1894. I don't think that matters to anybody.

Well. We've always like to think that we have the cheapest the cheapest ball on the country here because most of us who play rancher farm and we have trailers we have horses we have a pickup for the fair and and and and and we're looking for something to do with them. In the off time. So most of the people who play here. Are. Or. Ranchers or farmers but Or were there over the years all of being small and he met people by the party can't travel. And the more you travel the more you hold you know the players. And oftentimes better players in our cases most of the time better players and you begin to begin to enjoy some of the. Finer points of the game. Horses with four legs two hairs and sort of.

Form friendships that hold over the years and. And. And it becomes almost a way of life because of the amount of effort that it takes to play for. When I started. We were a loose knit mob. Led by a few good polo players and I had three horses and played them dogs twice we got by. Today was kind of a polo we have you're much better off to have five six maybe seven or six maybe a spare so that you don't have to play a horse twice you know six doctors in the game and if you have to play a horse twice very often and this level of fellow he began to cripple horses and have a lot of energy injuries the biggest injury is the chance of a horse falling on you. And they obviously way over a thousand pounds and you weigh usually under 200. So you're out weight here quite a bit.

That's the biggest concern as a horse from falling on you. The other danger is a mallet or the bowl into the bone. Elbow wrist knee or I face masks are optional in this game and most players in the last 20 years wear face masks as far as the absolute. Use of the security compared to say other schools to the figures often demanding more very demanding you come out out of breath when you come off the field and you have to get your horse and the surest tack a stright. You're ready to go back out there again. So yes it is it's better than any Harrogate activity I can think of that ever puts it in. For me personally it had to do with you know I was team open for quite a while

and I was kind of getting. Burned out on that and I had moved from an area over by Dayton and over here to Big Horn were this is historically they've always had pull here and I'm a good friend of Mike Morton's and at that time they were trying to recruit you know more players and everything and I thought well why not and my dad had galloped. Pole ponies in Santa Barbara and I grown up with a share for boys and their father played polo out here at the concert and so I mean I had a young kid I can remember I didn't know anything about the game or anything so I just decided that I'd try it. And it's kind of like a lot of sports if you get into it and and you get the bug and it doesn't. I mean it's just everything's that's all you can eat and sleep it off so that's what happened to me. You're.

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities and ridging lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas.