Along for the Ride : Moorpark Polo Team Doesn’t Have Horses to Stay With Big Schools, Goes to Regional for Experience

Arshia Radpour, a 22-year-old Iranian emigre attending Moorpark College, whipped a polo mallet over her head and cantered her pony toward a rolling wooden ball. Looking dashing in burgundy helmet with face mask and Argentine-style leather boots with knee guards, she brought the mallet head crashing toward the ball . . . and whiffed.

Hitting the ball: A slight technical problem that Radpour hopes to iron out before the West Coast regional at the end of this month. That’s when the Moorpark College club polo team--made up entirely of novices such as Radpour--will cross mallets with such established club teams as USC, Stanford and UC Davis, which has won 16 U.S. Polo Assn. national championships.

Moorpark is given little chance to win a match, but that doesn’t matter--just showing up will be a triumph. Before Radpour started the team four months ago, most of the players, Radpour included, could not ride a horse.

“It usually takes a couple of years to get a club going,” says Stormie Hale, who coaches Moorpark and USC. “It’s amazing they did it this fast.”

The catalyst was Radpour, a Chatsworth High graduate whose determination made Moorpark the first junior college in the country to play polo. Posting flyers last October, she eventually recruited a core group of four or five club officers. The club elected Radpour president and drafted a constitution. It satisfied Moorpark College insurance requirements by getting players to take out $25 annual student memberships in the U.S. Polo Assn., which carries a $1 million liability policy on each of its members.

Radpour, a communications major, spent hours on the phone talking to the 40 students who responded to the flyers. In November, she persuaded half of them to pay $20 for a lesson at Hale’s H&H; Polo Club in rural Moorpark. But it wasn’t an easy sell.

“I had to fight the stereotype of polo as an elite sport played by the royals,” Radpour says.

Without funds from the college, cost was a deterrent to many Moorpark students--at least two $20 lessons a week throughout the season are required. Radpour found herself pitching economics over the phone. “If you spend your money more wisely and not go out on a Friday night, then you could afford to take lessons,” she told them.

Only five women and two men came

out consistently through February, when an additional five players joined the team. The men’s team, however, has not made the same progress as the women’s. “The women have been more aggressive in committing to it,” Radpour says.

So the women are going to the regional--and the men are parking cars. “Put it behind the white truck,” says Matt Magee, who, along with Eric Somes, was showing visitors where to park before a recent scrimmage at H&H; Polo Club. Magee and Somes have not developed their polo skills as quickly as the women because “the men’s team has been a little slow getting organized,” Magee says.

Although Magee and Somes have riding experience and a background in sports, polo is a lot tougher than they imagined. “I played baseball for six years, but hitting a polo ball is harder than hitting a baseball,” says Magee, who attended Newbury Park High. Somes, a Simi Valley High graduate and dirt biker, is surprised he likes polo so much and calls ponies “natural motorcycles.”

The scrimmage was the first public demonstration by the women’s team. As family members filmed them through video cameras, six women urged their ponies after an apple-size wooden ball bouncing across a large grass polo field. Controlling the action from the sideline was Hale, who belted out advice and criticism in a powerful soprano that could be heard above the pounding hoofs: “No, Liz . . . no, Liz . . . no, Liz. Keep going, Liz . . . slow down . . . don’t canter yet . . . now line up and knock it in.”

Hale, 28, and her mother own the three-acre horse ranch, which is three miles from a main road, flanked by citrus groves and 10 miles from the college. Hale, a pro polo player for 15 years, has taught polo for 10 years and has been USC’s coach for three. Her mother, Sue Sally Hale, is a polo legend. For 20 years, beginning in 1952, Sue Sally pretended to be a man in order to play pro polo; years later, she became the first woman allowed to play in the pros.

“My mother put a mallet in my hand when I was 10,” Stormie says.

Hale was asked to handicap the players on the traditional polo scale: 10 is the highest and negative-2 the lowest. “A 10-goaler,” Hale says, is defined as a player who has a mastery of strategy and technique and can “do everything at full-out speed.” A player rated negative-2 is not able to canter or make contact with the ball; negative-1 players are able to canter but will hit the ball only occasionally. Hale handicaps the Moorpark women as “almost” negative-1: good canter, no hit. Her handicap of USC men: O; USC women: negative-1.

Collegiate polo hasn’t approached the skill level of soccer or hockey, both of which began as club sports and gained varsity status at many colleges. Nor does it seem likely polo ever will grow beyond the club level. The main factor limiting polo’s appeal at the is horse-related expenses.

Some Eastern colleges give polo scholarships and have their own horses, but at Western colleges students pay most or all of their expenses. USC matches funds raised by its team; Moorpark students pay for everything, spending at least $50 a week.

Even when it was common for ROTC cadets to play polo in the ‘20s and ‘30s, only a handful of colleges had teams. After the Army disbanded the cavalry in 1942, interest in polo plunged to only one or two schools. A mild resurgence began in the mid-1970s, leading to this year’s record high of 19 colleges (and about 110 players).

Although UC Davis dominated collegiate polo in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s--mainly because of eight siblings from a polo-playing family--the East Coast has a rich polo tradition fed by private prep schools. At the national finals starting April 14 in Bushy Creek, Tex., Cornell will be the defending men’s champion and Virginia will defend its women’s title.

Another factor keeping polo a decidedly minor sport: the lack of qualified teachers and facilities. If it weren’t for H&H;, the Moorpark players would have to train at the L.A. Equestrian Center, a trip that no doubt would dampen enthusiasm; it’s difficult to imagine even Radpour forming a team without the local facility.

Radpour knew about the ranch because of her older brother, Ardeshir, who has been on the USC team for a year and a half. Ardeshir was indirectly responsible for her determined effort to form a team. “He mocked me,” she says, laughing. “He said I couldn’t do it.”

Children of an Iranian businessman who moved his family to Northridge in 1976, Arshia and Ardeshir saw in polo a chance to recapture a part of their own history. They regard themselves as Persians, ancestors of the Iranians and masterful horsemen who “invented polo 2,500 years ago,” says Ardeshir, a 23-year-old history and political science major.

Ardeshir isn’t mocking his sister any longer. “I’m very impressed that her club is out here playing,” he says. But how will the rest of the Trojans regard the upstart Moorpark team in the regional at Indio? After all, the USC football team thought Fresno State was a hick school.

“There’s no (snobbish) attitude toward Moorpark,” Ardeshir says. “They play well, especially for a young team. But winning or losing is not the point: They’re respected for getting the team going.”

His sister gets most of the credit. She had to overcome a lot, including a phobia: “I have to admit,” she says, blushing, “I have a fear of horses.”

A Polo Primer

College polo is a scaled-down version of the standard game.

Using only three players on a side instead of four, college polo teams compete on arena-size fields (300 feet by 150 feet) rather than the larger (300 yards by 160 yards) outdoor field. While the college game consists of four periods, called chukkers, each 7 1/2 minutes, international matches sometimes last seven chukkers.

Equipment consists of a wooden mallet 48 to 53 inches long and a wooden ball (usually willow), roughly three inches in diameter. As in soccer, the object is to pass the ball downfield and hit it through a 24-foot-wide goal.