No Horsin’ Around at UConn
Quick and scrappy, this group of Connecticut athletes knows how to win national championships.
And that’s just the horses.
The University of Connecticut women’s polo team won the program’s fourth national championship last month, beating perennial rival Cornell for the title in Fort Worth. Cornell and UConn have won nine national titles in the past decade. They are to women’s collegiate polo what UConn and Tennessee are to women’s basketball.
That’s where the comparison stops.
The Huskies on horseback rely on volunteer coaches and donated polo ponies. There are no scholarships, strength trainers or tutors, just hours in the saddle, grooming, tacking and, in some cases, nursing sick horses.
The team plays indoor arena polo, pitting three on a side in a season that stretches from late September to April. It’s fast and physical and played with a rubber ball slightly larger than a softball. The matches are divided into four 7 1/2 -minute periods called chukkers. The school won three straight titles in the late 1990s with a team that included national player of the year Kim Morgan Syme.
She’s giving back to the program now. She and her husband, Matt Syme, who also played polo at UConn, put in at least 20 hours a week as volunteer coaches. When the team won the championship April 9, Kim Syme experienced the same joy she had as a player.
“I knew how much work they put into it,” she said.
For all its success, the UConn polo team draws little fanfare. But it’s not an unknown to some of the best players in the country.
“I went online and searched schools and found out who had the best facility, who got to practice the most,” said freshman Elizabeth Rockwell. “I contacted the schools and made my decision on who the best program was.”
According to the U.S. Polo Association, there are 30 colleges and universities in the United States that play intercollegiate polo.
Rockwell and UConn teammate Mary Taylor played on a national championship high school polo team at Garrison Forest School in Owings Mills, Md.
“You just have to get the right people to come,” said animal science professor James Dinger, the UConn team advisor and former coach.
Upgraded facilities have helped. During UConn’s string of titles in the 1990s, the team had no indoor arena and had to travel to play in either Somers or at Yale University. That all changed in 2001 when the school built a 120-foot-by-220-foot arena.
“It’s so beautiful now,” Dinger said. “We used to spend four to five hours every time we had to play with just the travel.”
Dinger said he also hopes to upgrade the string of ponies, most of whom are older than the players.
“We’re trying to get better and better horses,” he said. “As you get more alumni out there and more recognition, people tend to send horses to you.”
The team’s hands-down favorite mount this year is 13-year-old Julietta, a little horse with a big heart.
Rockwell explained that the mare has “a good bump.”
“She rides off the line real well,” Rockwell said. “She crashes into them.”
“She plays like a Mack truck, but she’s the size of a Geo,” teammate Amy Wisehart said.
The six players on this year’s team hail from Texas, Indiana, Maryland and Connecticut. Not all played polo in high school, but all grew up with horses.
Wisehart, a senior from Salem, Conn., came to UConn to run track and instead fell in love with polo. Kelly Wisner, of Upperco, Md., a left-hander, had to adjust to playing right handed. All players have to carry the mallet in their right hand for safety reasons.
Jill Curtis, an animal science major from Indiana, has at times spent the night in the barn nursing a sick horse. She’s ridden since childhood, but says polo is a much different discipline.
“Polo riding and riding riding is very different,” Curtis said. “You have to shut off half your brain and say ‘OK, now I’m playing polo,’ or ‘now I’m jumping.’ ”
Meaghan Scanlon, a dairy farmer’s daughter from Lebanon, Conn., proved her toughness when it counted most. Scanlon fell from her horse and broke her right hand before the championship game. A cast was out of the question because she couldn’t grip a mallet. Instead she wrapped it in veterinary bandages and played through pain.
Scanlon and her teammates had lost to Cornell the previous year in the semifinals and had a score to settle. They had counted down the days all year until this championship.
“We were not going to let them win it,” Scanlon said.
Kim Syme can understand the grit that defines polo players.
While leading UConn to its third straight title her senior year in 1998, Syme fell from her horse and tore a knee ligament in the semifinal. She was back in the saddle for the championship and helped UConn close out an undefeated season.
Scanlon has that same toughness.
“She has the potential to be the best woman to come out of college polo,” Syme said. “I could put her in the polo arena without a mallet and still be confident about her play.”