Paupered Polo Players Lose To Blue in Post-War Debut

When Joseph E. Brown took the memorable part of Polo Joe, an allergic equestrian, in a 1936 pursuit cinema, he probably set polo back 10 years. The late conflict finished the job, and for five years the erstwhile diversion of Tibetan bandits has been as extinct as the Fiji dodo bird.

Postwar statistics show that no longer does one in every thousand Ivy League students own a string of spirited mounts, but a scattered number still have a yen for polo. Last November at an Adams House parley 35 prospective players decided that the time had come to revive the game started by Teddy Roosevelt at Harvard back in 1882.

Although it has no horses, no H.A.A. support, and no coach, the Crimson polo team in now on a playing basis, and last Saturday galloped through its first match of the new era. Following the pattern of companion Harvard teams it succumbed to a fully-equipped and experienced Yale squad by a forbidding 23 to 4 margin.

At Yale the polo picture has returned to normal. The Elis, a notable exception to the 1 in a 100 statistical survey, have a stable of horses, all privately-owned, an indoor polo field across the street from the Bowl, and a coach. Clad in white breeches and blue-and-white jerseys, the Yalies charged into the semifinals of the recently-revived Eastern Intercollegiate Polo League by beating the Crimson team. To play the game, the Harvard team traveled to New Haven and played on Yale's horses with Yale's equipment.

Despite these handicaps, the team is moving ahead and, according to Stewart Bennett, one of the postwar organizers, has scheduled three more games: "We play Norwich on their mounts on March 20 and have a return match with Yale on the 27th," Bennett said yesterday. A tentative match with Williams is set for next spring on the ponies they borrow from the Pittsfield polo club. "That's the kind of arrangement we'd like to make around this area," he added.

"Our lack of practice and experience is quite serious," Bennett admitted, "but all our men have played the game before," First teamer Sandy Calhoun played for a Manila team in 1941 and also for Andover while Emil Van Peborgh got some experience in the Argentine. Bennett has playing time behind him at the Squadron "A" indoor area in New York. On the second string, Tim White, brother of two former Harvard players, played in Cleveland; Tom Calhoun, brother of Sandy, also rode in Manila; Emery Houghton wielded the mallet in Arizona. "Unfortunately some of us haven't been on a horse since before the war," Bennett added.

About the only practice the polo team gets at present is a canter on a riding academy animal or a survey of the feats and tactics of the powerful Crimson polo aggregations of old. But plans are under consideration to build an indoor cage to practice in. Under this scheme the player sits astride a wooden horse and bangs the ball against the sloping sides of the enclosure, which, via gravity, return the pellet for another clout.

In view of present circumstances the consensus of polo opinion feels that the Crimson did well enough, at Yale for its first game. The Elis led at the end of the first two chukkers, 18 to 0, while in the last two the score was much closer, 5 to 4. "Indoor polo is a higher scoring game than outdoor," players point out. An inflated leather ball, about the size of a grapefruit, is used instead of the usual willow root variety, which is harder to drive. This means scoring."

One player ventured that he thought Yale had a well-trained group of horses.