The short answer: I didn't grow up riding horses. I won a set of polo lessons at a charity silent auction because nobody else bid on them, walked out of my first lesson feeling more alive than I ever had, saved for two years in a corporate marketing job in Los Angeles, and in 2016 quit to train full time in Buenos Aires. I've been chasing this sport ever since.
People ask me all the time whether I grew up riding. The way they ask usually tells me they've already decided the answer: a wealthy father, a Christmas pony, lessons since age four. I know plenty of people who were born into polo. That isn't my story.
A silent auction nobody wanted
After I graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles, I moved back to Houston. My best friend, William, was being roped into running the youth division of his mother's horse charity, and William, who is allergic to horses, had no chance of getting out of it. Whatever William got roped into, I got roped into too. We were partners in crime, the kind of friends who threw ninja stars into the pine trees in his backyard and filmed women's self-defense videos by tackling each other into the itchy grass. Most of my life at an all-girls prep school had made me a little more civilized than him, so I settled into charity life just fine.
At one event I noticed that nobody was bidding on polo lessons in the silent auction. I thought, I'll open it up, I probably won't win. It looked cool, and I've always been drawn to the unknown and the obscure. I like to explore something for myself before I pass judgment on it.
What I didn't know yet: in much of the equestrian world, polo sits at the bottom of the pecking order. Some equestrian clubs didn't even let polo players use the same facilities as other riders. You hear lines like "polo players know nothing about horses, they ride them like motorcycles." That's why none of the proper riders at the charity were bidding.
I won.
The first lesson
I couldn't tell you the specifics of that first lesson. I can only tell you how I felt after it: more alive and more powerful than I had ever felt in my life. It was a rush I wouldn't feel again for a couple of years. I knew I was hooked, and I knew I had just fallen for one of the most expensive sports in the world. The only thing I could say to my boyfriend at the time was, "I'm either going to need to be rich or marry rich, because I am not giving this up."
I wasn't going to wait around for a man to pay for my new addiction. I decided to become my own knight on a white horse.
Step one: make the money
I took a full-time corporate marketing job in Los Angeles and shared a room with my old college roommate for two years so I could save. One $22 cocktail a weekend at a trendy rooftop bar, and that was the whole social budget. I had my eye on the prize.
Then the numbness set in. You know the feeling: life on autopilot, like driving for half an hour and arriving with no memory of how you got there. Your legs sometimes kick as you fall asleep because your body thinks it's falling and tries to save you. Something in me kicked like that. This couldn't be it. I refused to let it be my life.
I asked for partial remote work, unpaid time off, and a mental health leave. Every request was turned down. No compromises. So I had my answer, and I resigned. Instead of the usual two weeks' notice, I was given the afternoon to say my goodbyes (they still paid me for the two weeks). When I walked into my boss Tony's office and shut the door, he said, "You've got some big balls, girl." I prefer to call it vaginal fortitude. Everyone knows balls are sensitive and crumble under pressure.
Step two: Argentina
Within a couple of weeks I'd squirreled most of my things into my mom's garage, packed everything else into my lime green luggage, and flown to Buenos Aires, the Mecca of polo. I didn't know a soul and I didn't speak the language. I knew it was the best decision I'd ever made.
The savings paid off. I trained every single day for three months. The grooms tacked up my horses and even insisted on polishing my boots, because they couldn't bear to watch a lady do it herself.
Five years later I came back to the sport in Florida, where my new coach handed me a saddle on day one and expected me to know what to do with it. That story, and the moldy house I slept in to get there, is in You're at Rock Bottom, Lucky You. What came after, a tour of every polo club in America, is in what I learned trying to visit every polo club in America.
Two myths I had to break
"You have to be rich to chase your dreams." I wasn't. I saved in a shared bedroom, and that savings bought me three months of full-time training in Argentina. Polo has a yacht-money ceiling, but you can start well below it. Here are the real prices I paid at clubs across America.
"You're not ___ enough." For me the blank was athletic. A well-meaning uncle told me I could be pretty and smart, but not athletic too. I wrote about how polo answered him in You Can't Be Athletic Too.
You don't need to be born into something to belong in it. You don't need anyone's permission. If polo is calling you, here is how to start playing polo, even if you've never ridden.
Finding a game and a good horse in a new town shouldn't depend on who you know. That's why I'm building PoloFlow. Polo, wherever you are. Join the waitlist at poloflow.com.
