Polo

On Sunday we went back to The Villages to watch a couple of polo matches at their polo club. We had a blast! And I learned so much about polo.

There are four players on each team. Men and women can and do play on the same teams. Each player has a ranking/rating from -2 to 10. Only about 1/3 of all polo players are ranked at 3 or above. The ranks of each team member are added together for the team ranking. The idea is to find teams with the same totals to play against each other so they are evenly matched. For instance. in one match we watched, the individual rankings on one team were 0-1-3-4, on the other it was 0-0-4-4. So each team had a total of 8.

A game consists of six periods, called chukkers, which run seven minutes each. And yes, the spectators actually do swarm the field after the third chukker to stomp down the divots. During the second match, the club even served champaign to the stompers. Great fun.