Mashomack Polo Club Reopens for Summer Season

Polo enthusiasts have reason to celebrate as the Mashomack Polo Club in Pine Plains has reopened for the summer. The club held its first practices on May 25 and promises an exciting season of matches that are free to the public, making the traditionally exclusive sport accessible to all.

“The club gives a lot of life to Pine Plains,” said Juan Olivera, manager of the Mashomack Polo Club, which opened in 1982. He estimated that a hundred families come to the area during the season which runs from Memorial Day weekend through the end of September. “A polo team has a lot of people that make it happen,” said Julio Ezcurra, the club’s head coach.

Both Olivera and Ezcurra originally hail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and are now American citizens. They primarily reside in Wellington, Fla. During the summer, Olivera lives on Carpenter Hill Road in Pine Plains, while Julio Ezcurra, the head coach of the club’s polo team, calls Smithfield home. 

Olivera has been involved with polo at Mashomack for 22 years, managing the club for 12. “This is probably the best club in the Northeast during the summer, by far,” said Ezcurra. “You can see all of the polo fields that we have, the number of members. It’s quite unique.”

The club maintains five tournament-class fields, a practice field, and an outdoor polo arena on over 2,000 acres owned by the private, members-only Mashomack Fish and Game Preserve Club. “Members support the preservation of the property, which the polo club leases part of to play polo on,” said David Thieringer, general manager of the Preserve Club. Membership in the polo club, which has about 60 members, does not grant access to the Mashomack Fish and Game Preserve Club.

The polo club annually fields between 12 to 16 teams. They compete against one another in four different leagues distinguished by the number of goals they play to, ranging from up to 3 to 12. Each team consists of four players and a group of grooms, who care for the horses. The objective is to strike the polo ball with a mallet while riding on a horse, driving it down a 300-yard-long, 160-yard-wide field and past the goalposts. Matches, which last from one and a half to two hours, are divided into time periods called chukkers, each 7 and a half minutes long, with either four or six chukkers per match, separated by a halftime. 

Each player requires eight to 10 horses in order to play competitively. The horses are swapped out throughout the match to prevent fatigue and injury, with a veterinarian on staff to ensure their well-being. At Mashomack, they switch horses at every half chukker to keep them safe. 

“To be on a horse and hit the ball at galloping speed is incredible,” Ezcurra said. “You can see when a horse likes to compete, he likes to win the position. They are born to play polo.” 

Ezcurra, who began playing polo at the age of eight, compared the popularity of American baseball to that of polo in his native Argentina. He has won prestigious tournaments worldwide, including the Geneva Open and tournaments in Argentina. Today he passes down his knowledge of the sport to younger generations at the club’s polo school, training new players, most of whom, Ezcurra said, are local. “We teach them and turn them into real polo players,” he said.

The calendar of events at Mashomack Polo Club includes a variety of matches and tournaments. The International Cup, celebrating its 25th year, will take place on June 22 and is the club’s most socially celebrated event. The International Cup is the only match not open to public spectators as it is the principal fundraiser for the Mashomack Community Fund, a philanthropic nonprofit that supports local organizations and provides scholarships for local students in and around Pine Plains. As of this week, tickets for the match have sold out. The season’s pinnacle is the July USPA Eduardo Moore Invitational, hailed as one of the most prestigious tournaments in the United States.

As the season unfolds, wildflowers continue to bloom brightly along the quiet outer edges of Mashomack. On the tournament fields, the muted thunder of galloping horses, with their sleek musculature shining in the sun, is a spectacle to behold.