A Fresh Start for Harvard Polo

It’s 2 p.m. on a weekday afternoon, and while most Harvard students are finishing afternoon classes for the day, the Harvard Polo Club loads up in a van and makes the hour-long trek to Ipswich, Mass., for an afternoon of intense training and horsemanship.

“[I love] getting that time away from campus,” said junior men’s polo captain Shawn DeMartino.

Well outside the Boston city limits, the team trains under the close eye of coach and Harvard alum Crocker Snow ’61, who has witnessed firsthand the reestablishment of the polo program at his alma mater over the past six years.

The resurgence of Harvard polo can largely be attributed to the efforts of Snow and his family, who have helped spearhead efforts to reinvigorate the once obsolete program. The Snow family has deep ties to the sport, as Snow himself was an accomplished amateur player. His wife Cissie was once considered one of the top American professional players, and three of his five sons play professionally.

“[Crocker] is probably one of the most interesting guys I know,” DeMartino said.

Now at the helm of the program alongside his wife, Snow works to bring his knowledge and love of polo to the Crimson students who take to the game each year.

REKINDLING AN OLD FLAME

According to Snow, the Harvard Polo Club—initially founded in 1882—is the oldest intercollegiate polo club in the country. But the club has drifted in and out of existence since its inception.

“It’s been up and down for a long, long time,” Snow said. “There were a lot of times when there was really no team at all.”

As a student at the College, Snow was a member of the varsity men’s hockey team. At the time, there was no official polo club at Harvard. But as an experienced rider, Snow cultivated his interest in the sport during his undergraduate years.

Though the Harvard team was never officially established, Snow and three or four of his friends travelled to other schools with instituted programs to play away games, often on borrowed horses.

After graduation, Snow travelled all over the world as a foreign correspondent, but amidst his busy travel schedule, he continued to play recreational polo overseas, developing into an accomplished amateur player.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Despite the enthusiasm of Snow and his peers over four decades ago, the Harvard polo program was never revived until much more recently in 2006.

At the time, Snow’s fourth son, Nick Snow ’09, was a student at Harvard and, following in the footsteps of his father, a member of the varsity hockey squad. But during his sophomore year, the younger Snow decided to quit the team. Having taken up the sport in his early teenage years, the sophomore was an accomplished polo player, and he began investigating the possibility of resurrecting the Harvard Polo Club once again.

“He started talking to a couple people in the College,” said Snow of his son’s efforts. “He got a couple of people together to go take a whack at it.”

The younger Snow and company travelled that year to play at Yale. But without horses of their own, the team once again borrowed horses from their host for the first match played by the newly resurrected Harvard team.

Around the same time, the elder Snow married his wife Cissie, herself an extremely decorated professional polo player. Nick Snow asked his father if the couple would consider coaching the newly established team, and the pair quickly agreed.

“We really didn’t know what we were coaching,” the elder Snow said of his entrée into coaching. “All of the other kids had never played polo before. We got involved quite quickly to help out.”

JONES TO THE RESCUE

But even with the experienced couple at its helm, the program still lacked the financial resources to expand. Most importantly, the team needed horses with which to train.

Enter actor Tommy Lee Jones ’69. Coach Snow met Jones through a chance encounter in Florida, where the coach was watching one of his older sons compete in a professional polo match. Jones had heard of Nick Snow’s efforts to revive the defunct polo team at his alma mater, and as a long-time polo enthusiast, Jones approached the elder Snow expressing his interest in supporting the burgeoning program.

“He knew about [Nick],” Snow said. “[Jones] said ‘I’ve always been waiting for this, and I’m very happy to start helping out and giving you some support.’”

Nick Snow’s interest and Jones’s support created what Crocker Snow would call the “perfect storm” for the revival of the Harvard polo program.

The following year, the club recruited several new members; Jones and a few other private donors contributed several horses; and the polo club had once again established its presence at Harvard.

GROWING THE PROGRAM

Since its rebirth in 2006, the team continues to grow.

“Each year we get more players, a bigger schedule,” Snow said. “I would say [we are] completely well-established as a team now.”

Every fall, the team sets up a booth at the Fall Activities Fair in an effort to recruit new students to the program. Some players with past equestrian experience, like DeMartino, join the team as a way to continue riding in college, while others sign up having never been on a horse.

None of the players come in with any competitive polo experience.

“We’ve probably had a total of fifty or so players over the past five or six years,” Snow said. “Not one of them, other than my son, [had] ever held a polo mallet before.”

The growth and development of the players over the course of their time at Harvard is a highlight of Snow’s coaching experience.

“It’s been quite remarkable how excited the undergraduates have gotten with the game,” Snows said. “Some of them, over three or four years, get really good.”

The current team boasts a competitive schedule, having recently competed against the likes of Yale, UConn, Virginia, and Stanford, among others. Many of these schools recruit players with competitive polo backgrounds, but Snow maintains that Harvard can still compete with even the best of its veteran opponents.

“We do very well against most teams in the country,” Snow said.

But despite generous alumni and donor support, Harvard still lags behind its peers in terms of program resources. Currently, the Crimson has roughly 15 horses with which to practice and play. According to Snow, Virginia, a perennial polo powerhouse, boasts over 60. Cornell, the top Ivy League program, has well over 40.

The next step in the development of the program, in Snow’s eyes, is the establishment of a permanent home for Harvard polo.

Currently, the team hosts its home games at the Myopia Club in Hamilton, Mass., but Snow says the team would ideally have a permanent stable with which to house its horses near the Myopia facility. Fundraising and donor support efforts are well underway.

“We are quite close to [buying] a small farm where we could keep all of our horses and practice,” Snow said.

Another vision for the future of the club is the establishment of a therapeutic riding program. Harvard would be one of the first collegiate institutions in the country initiating such an endeavor, which would be open to graduates, faculty, employees, and families.

“It’s another way for the kids to get involved in a positive way, [while working] with the horses,” Snow said.

A DELICATE BALANCE

But while efforts to grow the program remain in the works, the team remains fully focused on its current endeavors.

This week, four members of the Harvard polo team will travel to Scottsdale, Ariz., to participate in the second annual Scottsdale Polo Championships. At the event, Harvard will compete in an exhibition match against Work to Ride, a competitive polo team comprised of students from inner-city Philadelphia.

Established in 1994, Work to Ride is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving underprivileged youth. In 2011, Work to Ride became the first all-black team to capture the U.S. Polo Association’s National Interscholastic Championship.

Noticeably absent from the Crimson contingent at the event will be Snow himself. Currently, Snow must balance his time between his coaching duties for the Crimson and his work as the director of the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy at Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. During the Scottsdale event, Snow will be overseas giving a series of talks in Armenia.

Though it can be difficult balancing polo amongst his other commitments, his students’ enthusiasm and drive keep Snow motivated and excited about the future of Harvard polo.

And despite coming in with no polo experience, most players consider their time on the polo team to be a highlight of their undergraduate years.

“Mostly everybody on the team would say that [polo] is by far the most enriching experience they’ve had on campus,” DeMartino said.

“That’s why I do it,” Snow said. “To me, it was always [about] the satisfaction of all the different kids that get involved.”