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Two weekends ago Stanford Polo Club hosted Oregon State University (OSU) for a fun weekend of scrimmages. Members of all experience levels played together in mixed teams on the field at Webb Ranch. These informal scrimmages were a great way to promote polo camaraderie in our region and for everyone to gain more playing experience. Thank you OSU for making the long drive down to play with us and for making this weekend possible! Information on this past weekend’s Alumni Tournament coming soon!
Both teams travelled down to San Luis Obispo last weekend for Regionals. Although neither team advanced, both teams showed great improvement and played some good fast polo, and had a lot of fun in the process. We also had two All-Stars named (congrats to Malav Chakravorty and Laura Hansen!) and a sportsmanship award (congrats to Eric Birdsall!). Spring quarter started today and the team is looking forward to another exciting quarter! We have lots of events planned, from new officer elections to our intra-club tournament to our annual Intercollegiate Alumni Tournament! This year the tournament will be on Sunday May 19th at the Menlo Circus Club in Atherton. It should be a wonderful event, and we hope to see you out there! Tickets can be pre-ordered using the link below and will also be sold at the gate. Let us know if you have any questions! 
This coming weekend both teams will travel down to the Central Coast Polo Club for Regionals! The men will be playing Idaho and Westmont in a round-robin, with games at 3:30 Friday and 1:30 Saturday. The women will play OSU on Saturday at 11:30, and the victor will play in the finals on Sunday at 10:00. Earlier this month, Stanford Polo traveled to Santa Barbara for pre-regionals and returned undefeated. Both teams will be advancing to regionals as the victors of Pre-Regionals, and in addition the Stanford contingent won four All-Star recognition awards, one Sportsmanship award, and two best-playing pony awards!
Both of our teams will be traveling down to Santa Barbara Polo Club this weekend to play in West Coast Pre-Regionals! Stanford Women will be playing USC Women at 1 PM on Saturday and Stanford Men will be playing USC Men at 4:30 PM on Saturday. If the women are victorious on Saturday, they’ll play again at 11 AM on Sunday. These games will determine which teams make it to Regionals so if you’re in the area (or would like to be) please feel free to come out and support us! We’re really excited for the weekend and have high hopes for both of our teams! (For those looking ahead, Regionals are scheduled for the weekend of March 22-24 in Cal Poly at the Central Coast Polo Club.) Hello again! Both our men’s and women’s teams will be kicking off their winter game schedule this weekend with home games against OSU! The women will play at 1 pm on Saturday, February 2nd and the men will play at 1 pm on Sunday, February 3rd. Both games will be at the Horse Park at Woodside. Come out and cheer on our teams! We’re planning on hosting several more home games and the game schedule should be up shortly. Also, save the date for our 5th Annual Alumni Tournament! This year’s tournament will run from 10 AM to 4 PM on Sunday, May 19th at the Menlo Circus Club. Tickets can be pre-ordered at http://polo2013.eventbrite.com/. We hope to see you on the sidelines! The year has been flying by, and we wanted to give you an update on our year so far, and share our excitement for the coming season! We began the year with very successful recruitment efforts. Tryouts were very competitive this year, and after three weeks of tryouts we were excited to add ten new members, five men and five women. Our ‘newbies’ have experience levels ranging from never having ridden before to having competed at the Olympic level, and some have played at both the interscholastic and intercollegiate level before! But more importantly, these students showed the qualities of hard work and integrity that we expect of all of our members.  Jeff Scheraga and Laura Huntley race for the ball at our demonstration chucker on Newbie Day! Our Women’s team has been very active this past Fall and has already traveled across coasts! So far, they have successfully completed games against Cal Poly, Skidmore, Yale, and Cornell. They are well prepared for the official intercollegiate to begin soon, and plan on having many more games in the coming months.
 Coach Heather Lake throws the ball into the line-up of a women’s scrimmage. Thanks to Fran and Dani for upping our level of play! Our Men’s team is excited to have a strong returner base, as well as a talented recruiting class this year. This year marks our largest Men’s team in recent Stanford Polo Club history, and they are very excited to begin the competitive season. We would also like to express our gratitude to Mr. Tom Shanahan for his continued support of our program. After his very generous donation of our new red truck, he has continued to offer us his help! Also, special thanks to Michael Dawson for loaning us Lolita for the winter! She’s made a great addition to our string. Overall we are very excited for the season to begin, and look forward to seeing what our teams are capable of. As always, let us know if you have any questions. We hope to see you out at a match! A game schedule should be up on the website soon. Happy Holidays! The Stanford Polo Club, alumni and parents, and the surrounding community had a wonderful and exciting day of polo at the Menlo Circus Club this past Saturday! The festivities started with a Polo 101 demonstration by Dr. Ashley McCaughan, a Dartmouth alum and horse sports medicine doctor, and a silent auction with items donated by Peninsula companies and private contributors. The first game of the day featured the Stanford alumni team against the Dartmouth representative team. The Stanford team consisted of alums Russell Field, Colvin Pitts, Jason Knight and Tom Shanahan, while Dartmouth included Megan Judge (Cal Poly alum and current Cal Poly coach), Francesca Finato (also a Cal Poly alum), Mike Zeliger (Cornell alum and current Stanford coach) and Greg Wolff (Cornell alum and previous Stanford coach). The teams were well-matched throughout the game, with Dartmouth finishing ahead 9-5. After the game, the polo club had the chance to thank Stanford alum Tom Shanahan for his extremely generous donation of a new red truck for our club to use to pull our trailers. Tom has been a strong supporter of both our men’s and women’s teams this past year, and has worked with us for several months to find the perfect new truck for our club.
The day also featured the introduction of a new pony into the Stanford string! Martinelli is a seasoned polo pony who has come from Cal Poly, and should be a wonderful addition to our string. We are already fighting over who will get to ride her first! To round out the day of college-themed polo, Menlo players suited up in colored polo shirts to represent various universities in their regular Saturday matches. In the second game, Menlo players represented Occidental College and Cornell University, while the third game featured a round robin of Yale, Harvard and MIT-themed colors. The sidelines also featured a demonstration by the Square Peg Foundation, in collaboration with Rupert Isaacson, who has pioneered the Horse Boy Method for using horses to work with autistic children. For the evening portion of the event, we adapted Stanford’s traditional Grilled Cheese event, with current and past club members gatheringto reflect on the past year, the successes of the Alumni Game, and our hopes for the future of the club. The night included a slideshow presentation of historical club photos compiled by Russell Field. He has worked tirelessly to search Stanford archives and interview past club members, and we believe he has finally tracked the official club start date to 1919, despite some confusion on the Stanford logo (ahh! The mysteries of our club!). The club coaches also honored Men’s and Women’s Team Captains Malav Chakravorty and Laura Hansen with best playing man and woman in the club, and senior Laura Lilly with the Outstanding Contribution award. Freshman Shivani Torres received the traditional Red Boot award for her immense dedication to polo and position as club treasurer throughout her first year. The event was incredibly successful overall, and we look forward to continuing to build the Alumni Match in coming years! Thank you so much to everyone who came out to watch. Stay tuned for last events of the season! We still have four weeks of school, and plan to make the most of them.
The Stanford Polo Club will be hosting the 4th Annual Stanford Alumni Polo Tournament at the Menlo Circus Club on Saturday, May 12th, 2012! The tournament will begin around 11 a.m, and will feature several games of fast field polo played by Stanford alumni and area Menlo players, sideline Polo 101 demonstrations, and a silent auction. The shady sidelines offer a prime spectator venue to watch a day of polo! Tickets are available through the link below. The Menlo Circus Club is located at 190 Park Lane, Atherton, CA. Photos from last year’s event are shown below.
Congratulations to the Stanford Polo men’s and women’s teams for competing in the Western Region Intercollegiate Polo Tournament at the Santa Barbara Polo Club this past weekend! Everyone had a wonderful time traveling to Santa Barbara to play fast, competitive and fun polo against schools from all over the California and the Northwest! The women’s tournament included Stanford, Westmont College, Cal Poly, Oregon State University and Washington State University. The men’s tournament included Stanford, Westmont, Cal Poly, Oregon State and the University of Idaho. The Stanford women started off the action-packed weekend with an intense game against Westmont on Thursday afternoon. This game determined whether Stanford would advance in the tournament, so the women were fired up to play our hardest. The women’s team consisted of Laura Hansen and Laura Lilly, with Helen Heymann suiting up as the third player for the first two chukkers, and Kellsey Beal stepping in for the third and fourth. A combination of solid teamwork across the arena, quick rotations, powerful shots and several key penalty shots by Hansen, led us to a 13-9 win at the end of the day. Following on the heels of the women’s victory, the Stanford men came out strong for their game against Cal Poly later Thursday afternoon. Malav Chakravorty led the men’s team, which also included Erich Schloss and Will St. Amant. The men demonstrated a lot of talent and teamwork, but their game was cut short when St. Amant took a fall at the end of the first chukker. The tournament officials acted prudently, choosing not to allow St. Amant to re-enter the tournament in case of potential unknown injuries. St. Amant ended up safe and healthy, but the Stanford men had to sacrifice the rest of their game. However, Stanford coach Mike Zeliger suited up to re-live his Cornell polo glory days and helped Stanford continue to play an unofficial game against Cal Poly. The women’s team faced their second round of competition Saturday morning, when we played Washington State, a new and unknown opponent. We took some time to figure out WSU’s style of play, but were eventually able to find our own stride and bring our game style back to the arena. We ended the first half trailing 2-6, but managed to keep that score through the third chukker. Although WSU came out strong at the beginning of the fourth with two points, Hansen scored some key penalty shots, and our women dug deep and worked as a team to finish several points at the goal. We ended the day behind 5-8, but on an upward swing and wishing we had two more chukkers to pull ahead! We were pleased with how we’ve come together as a team this season, and with the visible success in the areas we’ve been working hard to improve. On the women’s side, Cal Poly beat WSU, and the Westmont men beat U of Idaho, in the final games on Sunday morning. Cal Poly and Westmont will continue on to represent the Western Region at the Intercollegiate National Tournament at Cornell in mid-April. Stanford Polo was represented well at the end-of-tournament awards ceremony, though. Laura Hansen was named to the Women’s All-Star team for the tournament for her exemplary play, and Malav was given the sportsmanship award for the men’s tournament. Our club was extremely proud of our showing throughout the weekend, and had a really fun time traveling together and meeting and playing other teams. Our competitive season is over for the year, but the spring promises a lot of fun and informal polo at both the Woodside Horse Park and the Menlo Circus Club. Stay tuned for more! 
Malav Chakravorty takes the ball to his team’s goal
Mimosa is named Best Playing Pony for the women’s tournament!
Laura Hansen is named to the Women’s All-star Team!
This past Saturday, the Stanford men hosted the Cal Poly men’s team in a fast and close game that demonstrated how much our men have progressed as individual players and as a team. Malav Chakravorty captained the men, with Erich Schloss, Juan Borrero and Will St. Amant all sharing chukker time. Stanford and Cal Poly traded the lead throughout the game, with numerous runs and quick turnarounds between goals within each chukker. The Cal Poly men ended up winning 10-8, but according to Juan Borrero, the Stanford men ‘won in our own hearts’, because of how well they played. Everyone in our club is extremely impressed with how far our men have progressed, and how well their hitting and riding have come together!! Both teams are looking forward to our regional competition in Santa Barbara at the end of March. Stay tuned for more updates!
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