On a cold Saturday in mid-February, six collegiate riders maneuver their ponies back and forth across an indoor riding arena. It’s an away game for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Polo Team, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. The ponies kick up dirt as they gallop, stop, and spin on their haunches, quick to respond to their riders’ cues. The riders sport white jeans, tall boots, knee pads, and helmets with face guards. Seeing how the temperature is somewhere in the area of 15 degrees, the players do all they can to bundle up, putting their jerseys on over long-sleeved shirts.

This is hardly the first image that comes to mind when most people think of polo. They assume the sport is reserved for rich white men vacationing at summer homes in the Bahamas or some other place with endless sun, manicured lawns, and servants.

The UMass Polo Team defies these stereotypes. They face any challenge thrown at them, on the playing field and off, and won’t let those challenges stop them from playing the sport they love.

“The UMass kids are tough,” UMass Polo Coach Hilary Mroz-Blythe said. “They’re real troopers.”

Mroz-Blythe, 43, has been the coach  since the team’s founding in 2001, when two female students came to her barn in Leverett, Mass., Stone Pony Farm, and asked if she had ever considered coaching a college team. Mroz-Blythe was open to the idea, but told the girls they would need to have at least four players. According to collegiate polo rules regulated by the United States Polo Association (USPA), a team must consist of three players and an alternate. Clearly the idea of a polo team generated some interest among UMass students because, that September, Mroz-Blythe had a group of 12 players.

Since then, the team has fluctuated in size, growing as large as 18. This year the team again has 12 players, including seniors Natalie Dostoomian and Brittany Paquette.

Paquette, an animal science major like many of the polo players, explains what a big time commitment the sport is. Members must attend hour-long practices at Stone Pony Farm twice a week. In addition, one day each week everyone has to work on the farm, bringing the ponies in to be groomed and fed. Paquette estimates she devotes eight hours each week to polo.

And that’s not including the time spent at matches and tournaments, which are held on weekends and occasionally start on Fridays. Traveling time can be lengthy depending on where the match is held. The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, for example, is almost a five-hour drive.

“There aren’t that many teams around here,” Dostoomian said. “So you kind of have to travel.”

When a tournament starts on a Friday, Paquette has to miss class.

“It’s kind of hard when they’re on a Friday. But you know, you get used to balancing school and riding and playing,” she said.

Although the UMass team often hosts matches during the fall semester, they consistently travel to them during the spring semester. This is because Stone Pony Farm does not have an indoor arena, making UMass one of the only competing teams that does not have such a facility. This means that riders cannot practice actually playing polo all winter, which puts them at a bit of a disadvantage at competitions.

Instead, the team’s less-than-glamorous practices consist of trotting the ponies back and forth on a plowed stretch of track.

Mroz-Blythe commends the students for their devotion.

“They’re very good about making sure the horses are in shape enough to play when they need to play,” she said.

At competitions, Mroz-Blythe said, UMass is up against some formidable opponents. Some universities – like UConn – place a greater emphasis on their polo teams.

“We’re kind of in the middle of the pack,” Mroz-Blythe said. “UConn and Cornell are both in the region and they’re really good schools.” However, she said that UMass has won at the Preliminary National Tournament before, which gave them considerable recognition.

Almost all of the team members join with no prior polo experience, although it is a requirement that you know how to ride a horse. For Dostoomian, who has been riding for over 12 years, polo is something that just fell into place.

“I tried out for the equestrian team and the polo team,” Dostoomian says. “I didn’t make the equestrian team and thank god, because I got on the polo team and I love it.”

However, the financial aspect of playing isn’t easy. Each member pays $850 to Mroz-Blythe at the beginning of the semester, which goes toward coaching fees and the upkeep of Mroz-Blythe’s ponies. Such a big number is something that deters players, Mroz-Blythe speculates. Regardless, Paquette said that any sport is expensive; she thinks the cost is reasonable.

“Collegiate polo is really nice because you don’t have to have your own polo ponies and you don’t have to have your own equipment, for the most part,” Paquette said. Although players need to have their own helmets and boots, they don’t need to buy additional equipment if they choose. Mroz-Blythe has enough equipment – like knee pads and mallets –  to go around.

To handle the cost, Paquette works on campus as a test proctor. This year, because she demonstrated financial need, she also received a scholarship from the Polo Training Foundation, which only gives a handful of scholarships each year to students throughout the country.

“[The scholarship] definitely helped this year, for sure,” Paquette says. “I don’t know if I would have been able to [play] without it.”

When asked what she would do with her time if she didn’t play polo, Paquette was at a loss for words. Life without polo, she said, would just be so boring. In fact, it’s hard for her and Dostoomian to say what they like most about the sport.

“I love that it’s a competitive sport on horses, so it’s not just riding, it’s a team sport,” Paquette says. “And I like that we get to travel around and meet different teams from other schools.”

“I love polo because it is a team sport.  I enjoy being competitive on a team rather than as a singular competitor,” Dostoomian said, echoing the words of Paquette. “I like that it is such a challenging, physical and mental game. I also love the ponies!”

Even to Coach Mroz-Blythe, the sport isn’t all about winning.

“If [my team members] can enjoy the game and feel like over [their time spent playing that] they’ve become better, then I’ve done my job,” she says.

Shelby Ashline can be reached at [email protected]