Women Riders Play Dashing Polo Against Men

Feb 9, 1913

 

  Polo is in high favor as a winter sport. Many of the women who last summer invaded this field, so long exclusively man's domain and made enviable records at Newport and on Long Island, are at the several Southern resorts where it is possible to play the game throughout the Winter months. At Aiken. S.C., where the colony is so largely made up of devotees of outdoor sports, there have been practice games three times a week ever since the good riders began to appear.
Arrangements have been made for Important games, and in one of them the Aiken women polo players are to be matched against a woman's team from Texas. Texas women are famed for their good riding and bring a dauntless spirit as well as skill into their games. It will therefore be interesting to see these two teams engaged, for it would be hard to find in any part of the country, or outside of it, women more accustomed to the saddle or more courageous in action than those who make up the Aiken team.
   The name most intimately associated with polo playing is that of Hitchcock. Thomas Hitchcock is a veteran player and Mrs. Hitchcock can give almost as good an account of herself in the field as her husband and their two young daughters. the Misses Celestine and Helen Hitchcock, who have ridded ever since they were able to walk, are fast developing into crack players. The Hitchcock family belong to the Long Island colony and during the greater part of the year are to found participating in the outdoor sports. In the winter, however, most of them go to Aiken, so that there is practically no interruption the year round of their favorite forms of recreation.
                                                          Horse Is King at Aiken

Here, too, are other persons with congenial tastes - the Randolph family, the Harriman family, and others who make this their winter home and enter heartily into the various activities which have been characteristic of it ever since W.C. Whitney and some of his friends who were fond of life in the open selected this as an ideal place in which to spend the winter months. W.C. Whitney's fine place, now the property of Henry Payne Whitney, has been closed for several years, but many of the other members of the original colony have continued to go there every season and have been joined by friends with similar tastes.

  There is a field on which polo is played regularly three times a week, and one of the pleasant things that the members of the colony find to do is to go out on horseback or driving in high carts to see the polo players. Aiken is one of the few places where the horse still holds his own and the automobile is comparatively little seen. After the polo every one goes to the pretty clubhouse to discuss the merits of the players and the chances of the teams and other sporting interests.

  Events have moved very swiftly since women decided to include polo in their list of sports. It is less than a year since a meeting was held in the home of Mrs. Thomas Hastings, in New York, to organize the movement formally.  Mrs. Hastings is a splendid rider an adept in tooling a coach. At that meeting there were present such enthusiastic horsewomen as Mrs. H. C. Phipps, Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock and her daughters, Mrs. Reginald Brooks, who was Miss Langhorne of Virginia: Mrs. W. Butler duncan, Mrs. Jay S. Phipps, Mrs. J.E.S. Hadden, and Miss Frances Hadden. Mrs. Hastings was chosen manager of the team that was then organized.

  Soon after the meeting playing began in earnest on the Phipps and Bacon estates at Westbury

and the Grace place in Great Neck. Ever since then the women have been playing with the best players in the field, asking no quarter from them and accepting no handicap. Usually they have come out with flying colors, and there are many girls who will be able to give even a better account of themselves than the ambitious young women now playing, most of whom began their career by riding to hounds. Miss Flora Payne Whitney, daughter of Henry Payne Whitney, is one of the most youthful polo players and is likely to add to the prestige which attaches to her father's name in the polo realm.

  Miss Marion Hollins in another youthful applicant for polo honors. Among other players, Mrs. Charles C. Rumsey, who shares in her husband's enthusiasm for the sport, has shown great skill. She learned to master a variety of strokes and could hit a telling backhander as well as the simpler forehand dribble. Mrs. Joseph S. Stevens and Mrs. Watson Webb also have made their appearance on the field, playing with dash and effectiveness.

  Miss Eleonora Sears, of Boston, who is such an accomplished all-round athlete, is, as might be expected, a good polo player, and Mrs. Ambrose Clark, whose husband is a well known player, has borne herself creditably in games at Cooperstown, N.Y., and elsewhere, where polo holds a popular place in the scedule of sports.

                                               Miss Randolph's Skill

  Next to the Hitchcock family, however, there is, perhaps, no better woman polo player than Miss Emily Randolph, who has given proof of her proficiency, not only on the Long Island fields, but at Newport and in Aiken. She captained a team of men at Point Judith, and the captain of the opposing team was Miss K. Penn-Smith, of Philadelphia. Miss Randolph made four goals and brought her team through victorious with a score of 6 1/2 to 2 3-4 poiints.

  The interest among women riders in polo playing is not confined to the localities that have been mentioned. Wherever there is good riding and a love of sport, wherever there are country clubs, enthusiasm in the most thrilling of games has been aroused.

  Very few women use the side saddle in polo work, the turns being too sudden to make it safe, and, even more important, the freedom of movement required to strike the ball is not attainable in side saddle riding. Mrs. H.C. Phipps is one of the few players who has adhered to this style of riding. Indeed, all the young riders take it man-fashion from the first time they mount their ponies, and in playing polo they dress almost like the men. Skirts are tabooed.

  Mrs. Hastings definition of a proficient polo player is "one who is a good and daring rider, who possesses firm and steady hands, an unerring aim, clear vision, quick wit, and indomitable courage." These qualifications scores of women riders have proved that they possess.

  Winter polo is regarded as a peculiar boon to lovers of sport, for there are a hundred methods of outdoor diversion in summer for one at this season.

  With society's growing fondness for country life., here is one more attraction to give it permanence.

The New York Herald