1 p.m. Proceeds from the annual fundraiser benefit Boone County Senior Services, Inc. Polo matches can be confusing for people who have never seen them. Each team consists of four players, and the matches are divided into four to eight chukkers, or periods, each seven and a half minutes long. The purpose of the players is to score by knocking a hard plastic ball in eight-foot-wide goals. A regulation polo field is 300 yards long and 160 yards wide, more than seven times the area of a football field. The danger of the sport comes in when players foul one another but getting in front of other charging “polo pony,” the sport’s term for the horses. Hickory Hall has 18 playing members, more than enough to make up several teams that play each other. The members practice twice weekly, and match against teams from as far away as Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky, Greg said. To be a successful polo player, you have to be JAKE THOMPSON Boone County resident Sergio Gonzalez-Piriz athletic and a good rider, chases the ball after hitting a well-placed shot. with a keen eye to see where everyone else is on the field, Greg said. The sport is physical and demanding for the players, but even more so for the horses. “Horses are 80 percent of the sport. Some people would say even more, and I’d probably tell you more if you caught me on the right day,” he said. “The better the horse is the better the player is.” It’s the animals that make polo unique, Austin said. Not only does a player have to focus on finding and hitting a ball, but they have to keep in constant control of their horse and stay attune to its needs. The horses need to be exercised daily and kept healthy, he said. “When you play polo you’re not only a player on the team, you’re a coach, because the other players are your horses,” he said. The Chandlers themselves own 12 horses, and about 50 horses are housed at the club that belong to the members, Greg Chandler said. Polo players are allowed to change mounts after each period so the animals don’t get too worn out. Austin Chandler sometimes even changes in the middle of a period. The club leases horses to new members for up to one year, while they get a feel for the sport and decide whether or not they want to continue playing, Greg Chandler said. In addition to a good pony, polo players need leg wraps for their mounts, which support and protect the horses’ legs from injury, according to the U.S. Polo Association’s website. Players wear leather boots that extend up to their knees, cloth or leather helmets made of carbon-filter, foam and fiberglass, padded knee guards, mallets made of bamboo and hardwood and tack for the horse, including bridles, saddles and saddle pads. Hickory Hall offers lessons for new members, and will allow them to use the club’s equipment if they aren’t ready to commit to purchasing their own. Some knowledge of horses helps, Greg Chandler said, and the club will send people to take riding lessons at stables if they aren’t ready for the sport. Age and gender don’t matter in polo, Greg Chandler said. Hickory Hall has club members in their early 20s and as old as 70. What matters, he believes, is a love of the sport. “It’s my passion,” he said. “You certainly don’t make money in polo. For all our members it’s a passion.”
Continued from PAGE 3 it and marketing it to the South’s more refined palates. She notes this ad copy from Kraft: Printed underneath the sketch of a man dressed in an open-blouse and scarf who carries a bountiful basket of pimientos high on his shoulder, the text reads: It was a cook in sunny Spain who first enriched and softened the flavor by boiling the pimento in oil. It was a Spanish epicure who first used it in cheese. But it remained for the patented Kraft process of blending and sterilizing to bring this toothsome combination to its full, delicious perfection and make it a marketable delicacy. When you open — with the key — a tin of the Pimento style of Elkhorn Cheese and remove the delicate parchment protection, there before you is a symmetrical round of wholesome goodness, studded, like rubies, with scarlet bits of imported Spanish pimentos — nothing could be more tempting, except the flavor. It was there for work. Studded like rubies. So, which is it, working class staple or caviar of the South? Surprisingly, pimento cheese became, and has managed to continue to be, both. The spread remains an affordable choice for nearly any budget. You can also find it on the menus of some of the best, most costly restaurants in the United States. Nowhere is this dual role more evident than at the Masters golf tournament, held each year at Augusta National in Georgia. Tickets can cost thousands of dollars, yet the pimento cheese on white bread sandwiches they sell wrapped in green wax paper cost only $1.50. Whether you are the Masters type, the pack-your-lunch type, or the type that does both, here’s my own version of the Southern classic, with an added spicy Far East kick from Sriracha. If you make it, when you take a bite say a little word of thanks to our good neighbors to the south for their gentle ways, their colorful history, and of course, for the pimento cheese.
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“A Charitable Non-Profit Nursing & Rehab Center” 1585 Perry Worth Road, Lebanon, IN 46052 www.hickorycreekhealthcare.org “We Are Neighbors Taking Care of Neighbors”
SUMMER 2016
B MAGAZINE
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