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The club was originally founded by Leighton Jordan ‘78 and two of his friends in 1977. About 30 colleges have polo teams, and Skidmore’s team is competitive in the most difficult league. We compete with schools like Yale, Cornell, University of Connecticut, Harvard, and Texas Tech. The club is an affordable way for students to learn how to play polo, and such a chance is rare, as the cost to play polo outside the interscholastic or intercollegiate arenas is prohibitive.
This season the club had 25 members ranging from a large pool of freshmen to a strong group of seniors. We currently support fourteen ponies (Alley Cat, BJ, Crystal, Diego, Crazy, Sonya, Romper, Gaucho, Cabo, Divo, El Guapo, Espresso, Missy, and Christian); all are donations from other players who play outdoor polo or are arena polo ponies. Their total value as club assets may be $30,000 to $50,000.
In 1989 the Skidmore Women’s Polo team won the National Championship, defeating some of the best polo teams in the country. The club was a varsity sport until 1991, when it lost its varsity status after Athletic budget cuts and concerns that polo would gain an ‘elitist reputation’. At this time the club was also forced to move from Skidmore’s Van Lennep riding center (where the team had erected a 12 stall expansion wing around 1980 through fund raising in an effort to provide a permanent base for the polo program) to another privately owed barn off campus that the club would have pay for.
The club currently resides at Win-A-Maker farm, a few minutes north of the college, that has been the home of the club for a few years.
~Skidmore Polo Team 2009-10'
"Leighton Jordan ’78
is among the few who can claim they had a comparable effect on the college
and the community of Saratoga Springs. Jordan was a freshman when he and
two friends from the class of 1977 decided to start a polo club. The following
year, Skidmore men’s polo was competing with Yale, Cornell, Harvard,
and other top-ranking teams (Skidmore’s women’s polo players
simultaneously became intercollegiate champions)..." continue |
