Rough Riders Don’t Horse Around With Cowboy Polo

--Folks in Katy, Tex., call this sport cowboy polo, but it might as easily be called rugby on horseback. “If you’re man enough, and the horse is good enough, it’s better than football,” said Bill Weinmeister, a livestock salesman from Mitchell, Neb. He was among the participants in the world championship tournament held in the Houston suburb. The players--many of them ranchers or truck drivers--come from Texas, California, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona and Nebraska. They ride quarter horses instead of polo ponies, bashing a 12-inch rubber ball as they gallop back and forth across a 100-yard playing field. “We don’t ride thoroughbreds,” said Ken Lindemann, who plays for the San Jacinto Cowboy Polo Club in Pasadena, Tex. “For this sport, you need a heavy, bulldog-type cutting horse that isn’t afraid to mix it up.” Riders are allowed to cut each other off and to collide as much as they want. “I’ve been to the chiropractor 14 times so I could play in this tournament,” said Russ Sheldon of San Diego. The sport originated in the 1930s, when Florida cowpokes began swatting around a ball with palmetto fronds, and it retains its tough-guy origins. Gerald Crisp of San Angelo recalled one match in which he swung wildly, missed the ball and clubbed his opponent in the face. “I broke his jaw and cheekbone, but the guy kept playing. He didn’t even go to a doctor.”

--The voters of Crabb, Tex., have spoken. Mayor Brian Zimmerman, 12, retains his title, and the town retains its unincorporated status. With about 33% of the area’s 1,911 registered voters participating, the incorporation proposal failed, 595 to 30. Brian, who won an unofficial election at his aunt’s grocery store in 1983, had said he wanted to incorporate to protect the town from annexation by nearby cities. But if the plan had passed, he would have been out of a job. Texas requires all mayors of incorporated cities to be at least 18.