Yellow Pages
LA CONNER — On the outskirts of the quiet and quaint town of La Conner, behind a Victorian-style home, a classic sport was revived Saturday with the sound of galloping horse hooves and the crisp tapping of wooden mallets hitting a hard plastic ball.
The sport is polo. Its players describe the sport as a mixture of soccer, hockey and bumper cars — but on horses.
“You’ve got to like danger to play polo,” said 44-year-old Trichia Johnston, who was visiting the Skagit Valley on Saturday from Yakima to compete in the Pacific Northwest Circuit Governor’s Cup Polo Tournament.
The game, known as the sport of kings, goes back hundreds of years, mostly among the aristocracy. It is played on a smooth, mowed field about three times the size of a football field. Two teams of four play each other in four 71⁄2-minute quarters, called chukkars. At each end there is a goal but no goalkeeper to protect it.
Riders and their horses are allowed to bump into each other from the side as they fight for the ball and a goal, but they cannot cut in front of each other.
Players carry a wooden mallet with a bamboo handle, which they swing at a white, hard, plastic ball on the ground. The horses can reach up to 45 miles per hour, as their riders reach to strike the ball, about the size of an orange.
The game is graceful at times as the players guide their well-trained horses smoothly up and down the field. The rhythm of hooves was peaceful Saturday, in the otherwise quiet Skagit Valley. But a wrong move or a safety foul can quickly make the game life-threatening, causing a rider to fall from the horse and possibly be crushed.
Randy Thompson’s right leg is visibly bigger than his left. Thompson said he’s recovering from a crash earlier this summer. His horse ran into a fence pinching his leg with its weight.
“I can’t walk, but I can play polo,” he said with a smile as he limped along the outside of the field before his turn in the competition.
The field erupted with shouts in English and Spanish, as eight players fought for their turn with the 4-ounce ball or tapped it to a teammate in hopes of a goal.
“Keep on it Trisha,” one player yelled as they moved like a herd down the field.
“Aca,” translated into English, “over here,” said another.
After a brief scuttle, another player shouted, “largo,” or “leave it.”
Horses bumped into each other, and the ball was hit into the goal, and the horse galloped past it.
Several of the players were from Argentina. They live in the Northwest during the summer months for competitions, which have become increasingly popular in the past several years. At least one other player was from Mexico, and the others were from Canada and Washington.
Argentinian Nicolas Maciel was the highest-ranked professional polo player at the tournament Saturday. Maciel is sponsored by a Canadian patron. Other professional players also were sponsored to play in the Saturday event, played behind the house of La Conner resident George Dill.
Dill is a co-owner of the Washington Lettuce and Vegetable Company. He is also the Circuit Governor of the Pacific Northwest Circuit for the U.S. Polo Association.
He’s hosted a tournament on his field the past three years and hopes to attract more of the niche sport to Skagit County.
“It’s not often we get polo in our neighborhood,” said Stuart Welch, a La Conner resident who came to watch the games. “This is an exciting thing to watch.”
The polo tournament is open to the public. The games will take place at noon and 2 p.m. today at 16278 La Conner-Whitney Road.
Winners of the two Saturday games will play each other today.
“I think it was a very, very tough game and we ran a lot,” said Maciel after the first game of the tournament Saturday.
The running paid off, at least for him and his team.
They won by one goal, 5-4.
“It was a very good game. Close, fast, good, clean game,” said the umpire, Rodrigo Moran.
