Outnumbered & Abroad; Polo Lessons (Part 10)

Stonehenge (Thursday, September 27, 2018) - Pulling up to the polo barn, my heart absolutely soared. The absolute breathtaking beauty of the large, green, manicured polo field with its yellow goal posts, made ms o excited to ride my first ever polo pony! Walking around, two gentlemen horseback with polo mallets, rode past us towards the polo pitch and I felt like I had stepped into a movie that was not my real life.

“Are you here for a polo experience?” The elder of the two asked.

“Yes!” We chorused back.

“Go around the back there and up the stair case, Maddy will get you taken care of,” he said, before he was too much further away from us.

We found the office alright, stifling hot from the heat of a wood fire place. No one was in sight, so we set out to tactfully export. It was the quaint and untidy British stable that we could have only hoped it to be.

A young lady, about our age, came up the steps eating cereal out of a bowl. The viewing windows of the office looked directly into a fenced in practice arena. Maddy helped us fill out all of the paperwork and then began to ask questions and tell stories with us about horses - a natural for all equestrians. It is so funny how, no matter where you are in the world or the kind of discipline you ride, horses are the same quirky creatures. Colts will be colts and good horses will be good horses.

In the middle of laughing over a Johnson ranching story, Giles - our instructor - marched in and headed straight to the adjoining equipment room. Maddy immediately made a face, looking down.

“Uh oh, the lesson didn’t go well?” I asked.

“No, definitely not,” she said with exasperation and a nervous laugh that didn’t escape my self-preservation notice.

Giles started out gruff, angry at the world, but the charm of the Johnson-Schrock Clan was no match for his tough persona. Realizing that we could put one foot in front of the other with some hand-eye coordination, I couldn’t help but laugh at the relief he must have felt.

With shorter polo mallets, we took practice balls out into the arena, learning the fundamentals. Warren Clayton definitely picked up on it quickly, although, theoretically, I think we all did, but he definitely did because of his lacrosse background. Learning to “feel” the stick was the big thing I knew that I had to concentrate on if I wanted to even remotely keep up and provide some healthy competition for Warren Clayton later when we were horseback.

Left to right is Giles, Warren Clayton and then myself on Tonada.

We then got to get on our horses. Mine was a big chestnut mare named Tonada - fitting as my horse Tonah had the male version of the name and was the same color.

Learning how to steer the horses was not something I was ready to “learn” - I couldn’t help but laugh because Giles definitely had these pre-concieved notions on what western riding like reining and cow horse was like. He was wrong, but all of us were smart enough to keep our mouths shut and, besides a few furtive glances in camaraderie at the inside joke, we didn’t say a word about it until afterwards.

With the polo horses, you are supposed to tuck your knees up and calves back to ask them to go. Stopping we had to point our toes in and press our knees to them. While riding, in our general equitation, we weren’t allowed to point our toes out, because squeezing with your knees is the signal to stop - obviously (sarcasm).

I didn’t feel as if riding the polo horses was hard, nor did I ever feel uncomfortable. I did lose my stirrups two or three times, but that was more trying to ride in dressier cowboy boots with smooth soles and english irons.

Nicole was doing well until he told us to go ahead and pick up the speed. I swear she started going even slower and looked very uncomfortable.

Squad up!

At the end, Giles explained to us that we were going to play a simulation called “Fox & Hens.” It simulated the speed, strategy and coordination with your mount that polo needs, without adding in the additional variable of the mallet, ball and polo rules. As if anyone wouldn’t have guessed it, Warren Clayton and I were ruthless. I was especially proud of myself for a series of maneuvers near the end of the match that pulled me the victor in that specific game.

The rules of the Fox & the Hens is that one person was “it” and the rest were trying to catch them. The point of the “it” or “point” person was for them to try an outthink and outwit the others. Whoever tagged the IT person to be IT next.

Hanging back as Warren Clayton moved in on the tag of Randi, I timed my sweep past so that as soon as he tagged Randi, I was there to tag him. I immediately rolled Tonada around and asked her for everything she had in her tank. Two-thirds of the way down the arena, I got ready to whip around when Warren Clayton, slightly out of control, flew in on his horse… who promptly HALF BIT ME! Half only because I don’t think that she was trying to bite me but that her mouth open teeth grazed me because Warren Clayton was pulling her around cow horse style. Warren Clayton’s crazy gamble, however, paid off, and he got me on the tag that I had robbed him of just moments before!

Later, we found out that Giles had really thought we were going to be ten times more aggressive. I think he was thinking because, in our basic polo-equine fundamental lessons, he had us do rundowns, rollbacks and races back to the start. Ready to win I was SPRINTING to race Giles and, on our last one, the song of a gun cheated! Don’t worry, I informed him that I was well aware of his bad behavior, to which he only threw back his head and laughed.

I guess the big thing that caught him off guard was that when he stopped, we stopped! Trained to ride cow horses, all of us automatically only say whoa or ask for a stop when we mean stop. Stop also, to us, usually means a preparation for a reversal of direction. In polo, English and Giles’-world, they hardly ever come to a full stop. It is a combination of half-halts and pirouettes that we would never let our horses do back home.

It seemed that hanging out with the crazy Americans did some good for the grumpy Giles as he was in high spirits at the end of our lesson, unlike the one previous. I couldn’t help but notice that the entire polo team was watching us through the viewing room of the clubhouse as we turned to put our horses away. They headed down to the arena as soon as we walked through the saddling paddocks.

Giles and Maddy asked us a few more questions about our trip. Once again, we explained the story of how we all ended up in the UK. Giles wanted to see the next clue so we asked if hew anted to read it for our video camera for us! He was 100% down!

Nicole and I ran to the car to get the clue and camera, respectively, excited about the adventure. The clue Giles gave us was for Stonehenge down the road - which was predictable. What wasn’t predictable was what happened next.

“How much time do you have?” Giles abruptly asked us.

“A little bit,” Nicole said hesitantly. “Why?”

“Well, if you want to take the time, I can show you the babies.”

That, of course, had all of our attention! We piled into Giles’ car where he took us around his house, out to the pastures. He explained that they only bred about six horses a year, starting them at two and a half, but how, over time, it all adds up. My favorite colt was a dark brown with a blaze and socks.

Giles took some time in the pasture to tell us about his sons. He is a very proud father with his son being a top 25 player. I told him that I would be more than willing to help set up a clinic of sorts in Oregon if they ever wanted to come out to the west coast of America.

Driving back to the polo barn, I had to ask about the horse trailers I had seen which were an apparent new thing for them. I had automatically assumed while on the freeway that the two horse truck/trailer/caravan combo was just the norm here in the UK. I would love one of those back home to haul to the barrel races. It’s like a modern day version of our Grandpa McKee showing up at the Polk Country Fair gymkhana with Shad standing on the flatbed grain truck.

Pointing at their home, placed just beyond the practice pitch, Giles told us that we were more than welcome to come back for a few days while on our trip and play a lot more polo. I think Warren Clayton and I would have gladly taken him up on that! He literally offered us, both strangers and foreigners, into his home and onto his horses! He offhandedly mentioned that the home was well over a hundred years old but “that’s the norm around here.”

It’s comments like that that make my mind wander. In relation, our country is very young. Fifth-generation is a long-time for us, with the sixth and seventh generation farms or ranches of the east being somewhat of a novelty. Only in the past decade have we really begun to hand out centennial awards. Over here, a hundred years is nothing. Some of them may have ever been at a hundred years before our country became a country.

We left the polo lesson some what despondently. It was an exciting clue card, something that got our hearts beating and blood pumping with fresh air and athletic competition. Plus the remedy of all sad things and bad moods that horses can cure. The next clue didn’t excite me too much, it was Stonehenge which we had seen driving in. I did enjoy when Giles explained it to us. He told us that no one really knows what it is and that it was, “most definitely,” some kind of place for worship and celebration. He told us that there were many theories on how the large stones had been placed there and where they had come from.

“But, truth be told,” he told us conspiratorially, “they come from my friends farm up the road.”