The Polo Report
By Steve Crowder
Most of us are parents, or someday will be, and those will not understand yet. About 25 years ago right there in Indio CA, Artie Cameron, Joe Barry and I started a silly idea called Pee Wee Polo. Most people thought it was not a good idea, but we did not really care. The next weekend, Fred Mannix joined in and then things changed. It was a great idea and that day, 23 years ago, with the blessing of Alex Jacoy and Susan Stovall who ran the club, Pee Wee polo was born. Today it continues to grow. This weekend, so many things showed up on the map from the original Pee Wee program. So much fantastic news for the parents. Unfortunately most of them are playing far away from Indio. In fact, they are across the nation in Florida where they get rain, cold weather and a lot less polo. There is a lot of fabulous news of West Coast Kids or just plain old Desert Rats. Jesse “all day” Bray, as Toby Wayman calls him, was also one of the original Desert Rats. He is now high-goal. Jesse lost a thriller in the semis of Yulvisaker, but won the Joe Barry last month. Fred Mannix #2 won the Quarters and is headed to the Semis of the 26-goal Whitney Cup. Peke Gonzalez, son of Mariano Gonzalez, who spent most of his young career in Indio and Santa Barbara, is headed to the finals of the Y Cup. He scored the winning goal in OT today. Jason Crowder won the Robert Uihlien Cup in Sarasota today with Wildcat polo and was MVP .
The other amazing news is, as we all know, Andy Busch is a big fellow and Andy and Kim just happen to have a son Named Nick, who is a good as they get in high school basketball. He helped lead his team Santa Barbara High to the CA State Championships, which is this coming Sat. They do have a record of 30 and 1, not bad for a farm boy from St. Louis, but then Brother Billy’s son plays for Alabama University in Football. There a lot of these stories with polo people and I would love to hear more of them because it is amazing to look back and see what has happened to so many of our polo players.
While this is all happening so far East of here, why can we not bring the sport of Polo West? Fifteen of the last 28 days, Floridan’s woke up to “Polo Cancelled today.” Fields were too wet. We have not seen that in the desert, but 1 day this year. We have the fields, the crowds, airports, big cities nearby and yet we have the weakest polo. Why? I am not sure what the solution is for all of west coast polo, but in Indio you have two awesome clubs and I think it is so simple join them together. EMPIRE POLO may be the nicest place they play polo. They may need to improve fields, but they are awesome when polo ready and BIG Al will get it done. El Dorado has better fields now and a Manager who sees the future of polo and knows polo fields, that is Graham Bray. Let Graham run the good polo and the fields, let Al Haagen fix it up and sit back and see what we can do. We could have 10 top fields in 150 acres, side by side. Throw in Twin Palms and maybe Mannix’s new outfit and there would be a desert-style Pilar right here with much better weather. We have the Face of Polo here in the desert, Nacho Figueras. Now we need the rest of the world to see why he is here. It is AWESOME. We just need POLO PLAYERS.
A look at polo this weekend, as Indio goes on break for a week and Florida tries to catch up from the rain.
See ya.