San Diego Polo Club Annual Independence Day Arena Tournament
The day started with the usual perfect weather in a perfect setting. The excitement started off at 10am and continued throughout the beautiful 4th of July day.
Here are the results!
10am Round Robin – This was a great game where everyone playing put forth a huge amount of effort. Three teams and a lot more players than one might think battled it out. The Turks headed up by Rolf Johnson, Bryan Demmler , Mike Torres and Rhoda Hobbes started out strong, however, some key plays make by the leaders of Team Africa named Erin Rousey and Harrison Samaniego quickly put the stop to that. The third team was the Brits. Made up of two lovely ladies that can play some polo named Lisa Hoyle and Kate Ewart. They had great teamwork and goals with the Marine Justin Klein assisting and directing as he does so well.
All of these fantastic plays and players were just not enough to stop the mighty Africans made up of the hard-riding John Heenan, quick Harrison Samaniego, scoring machine Erin Rousey and that crafty Amy Penn.
Game two of the day was very intense and a great sight to see! Most of the young guns matched up against each other very well. Poway had the super hard-riding Savannah Broderick, quick-hitting Danielle Kammann both backed by Joel Deyer. The San Diego Team was headed up by the skills of David Samaniego, quick goals by the amazing Katie Neglia and fierce plays by our almighty Gerardo.
While the game was close, Poway was just not able to stop San Diego and the big engines running towards goal. This game was filled with too many highlights to list, but amazing riding, hitting and skills were demonstrated by all of these young players and the old man Gerardo!
Game three of the day was another evenly matched display of bone crushing power! Team Rancho Santa Fe made up of the crafty Ed Masterson, power of the Doc (Russ Dunham) and their captain Gregorio all narrowly missed the title. They just could not keep up with the racing Cary Burch, smart Russ Sheldon and the great plays made by Nancy Kirchhofer, Scott Bogess and David Teater.
Our last and final game was a wild-riding, hard-hitting bunch of folks! This game kept the crowd on its toes. Club Polo won in over -time against San Diego Polo. Club polo was made up of Manny Questel, Steve Hyde and our Cabo man Tony Yahyai. They only narrowly beat the Mexican secretary Fernando Pliego, rough Bill Ziering and the wild mullet Billy Hoyman.
Many thanks to the San Diego Polo Club staff for all of their support, Lisa Blumenthal’s great cooking, Danielle Kammann for sharing her amazing voice with us and the Poway group for coming and playing!
Photo credit: Dominick Lemarie
Text: Jessica Bailey
To purchase photos of the day please visit Dominick Lemarie at www.dlphotopets.com or call him at 858-750-6841.