Chaleston Polo Club

Making a comeback
Polo club tries to breathe new life into pastime
By David Quick (Contact) The Post and Courier
Thursday, October 16, 2008

photo by Blair Halford
Charleston Mercury

Local organizers see polo as a great outdoor spectator sport.

photo by Blair Halford
Charleston Mercury

Richard Stoney (front) hopes to bring polo back to its former prominence in the Lowcountry. Before Hurricane Hugo, charity matches often were held at Boone Hall Plantation.
If you go
What: Charleston Polo Club vs. Team Argentina.

When: Oct. 26. Gates open at noon; VIP tent service begins at 1 p.m.; matches start at 1:30 p.m.

Where: Longwood Plantation near Huger.

How much: $75 for sponsors and VIPs (includes main tent with open bar and food by Carolina Catering); $250 for sideboard parking, includes two VIP tickets; $10 general admission; free for children under 12.

Who benefits: Gibbes Museum, the American College of the Building Arts and the Lowcountry Open Land Trust.

Notes: No dogs or coolers. Directions and more at www.charlestonpolo.com or 577-9827.
For those who weren’t here for Hurricane Hugo, the storm interrupted a lot of life, and lifestyle, that we often took for granted in the Lowcountry.

In 1989, the Charleston area had an established polo community. Regular polo matches had been held for nearly a decade, some at a polo field near the Avenue of Oaks at Boone Hall Plantation, drawing 300-400 spectators at games that raised money for charity. Then Hugo blew through town, damaging Boone Hall and moving polo way down everyone’s priority list.

Slowly but surely, as people repaired homes, returned to jobs and recovered from the trauma, almost everything returned to normal — except polo.

Now, a group of men wants to bring it back.

The newly formed Charleston Polo Club will host a team from Argentina on Oct. 26 at Longwood Plantation, nestled in the Francis Marion National Forest near Huger, in the hopes of generating interest for eight matches in the works for 2009.

Richard Stoney, an attorney and owner of Crew Carolina, a restaurant and catering group that includes Carolina’s and the Boathouse restaurants, is bridging the 19-year gap between polo pre-Hugo and post-Hugo. He has been active in the relatively small polo pickup game scene here and has played polo around the world.

“I’m 56 years of age right now,” says Stoney. “Polo is a game that people can typically play until their mid-60s, but it needs some new blood in Charleston.”

His personal motivation stems from a love of horses, a passion passed along by his grandfather, and raising the role of equine sports in the area. Stoney also is working to bring back the Charleston Cup horse race, last held in 2003, in early November 2009.

As for polo, Stoney thinks it has potential in Charleston because of Aiken’s reputation in the national horse community and particularly its polo scene. Aiken, blessed with sandy soil conditions and mild spring and fall climate, has 35 regulation polo fields and draws most of the top 30 professionals in the nation.

Joining Stoney as part of the local polo club is Batt Humphreys, a former CBS senior broadcast producer in New York who moved back to Charleston more than a year ago. Humphreys is now the director of corporate communications for Crew Carolina and is helping promote the polo club.

Unlike Stoney, the 53-year-old Humphreys has been playing polo only about three years, but describes it as “the biggest thrill you can have.”

While Humphreys admits that polo is an expensive sport to partake in, perceived elitism has “done a real disservice to the sport.” Frankly, polo sometimes is referred to as the “sport of kings” and most people have seen photographs of Prince Charles and other royalty playing the game.

“We’d like to bring it back and keep it real,” says Humphreys. “Polo is a great spectator sport, outdoor event and social gathering. … It’s an event worth making an effort to bring back.”

The Game

Each polo match consists of four to six chukkers, or periods, that last seven and a half minutes with a warning bell at seven minutes and a final bell thirty seconds later. If a team scores after the warning bell, the chukker is stopped immediately.

The game is played on a field with goal posts on each end. The players try to hit the ball between the posts to score one point.

After each goal, the teams change sides.

Two mounted umpires accompany the players, generally four on each team in outdoor polo. The whistle is blown to indicate a foul and stops the clock.

At the end of the chukker, the players change horses.

The players

Each team consist of four players: an offensive player, an offensive midfielder, the pivot (often the highest rated player), and the defensive back. Each player is expected to cover his/her competitor who is the numerical opposite on the field.

The horses

The horses, traditionally called ponies, are well-trained equine athletes — often able to stop and turn on a dime. Polo ponies are considered faster than racehorses over short distances and are the most essential part of the game.

The handicap

In polo, a handicap is required and considered a good thing. Players are rated from minus two to ten. Ten is the best. Each team’s handicap is the sum of the players’ handicaps. In an open tournament, teams play “on the flat,” meaning that no scoring advantage is given to the weaker team.

In a handicap tournament, points are given to the weaker team based on the difference of handicaps between the two teams. For example, if a 16-goal (handicap) team plays against a 17-goal (handicap) team, then one point is awarded on the scoreboard for the 16-goal team at the start of the match.

The fouls

To the layman, fouls in polo are very hard to see. Even professionals have a hard time, but one can usually tell a foul by listening to the players after the whistle blows.

A foul is basically a dangerous play, mostly stemming from crossing in front of the man with the ball. When the ball is hit, it creates an invisible line and the players must follow it as if they are driving on a make-believe road. Each time the ball changes direction, the road changes as well.

Penalty shots are awarded depending on where the foul was committed, or upon the severity of the foul. Lines on the field indicate where midfield, sixty, forty and thirty-yard penalties are taken from. If the ball is hit past the back line by a defending player, a sixty-yard shot facing the spot where the ball went across the line is awarded.

Reach David Quick at 937-5516 or dquick@postandcourier.com.

Article From: http://charleston.net/news/2008/oct/16/making_comeback58006/