At the University, greatness is expected. Many have praised the championship pedigree of women’s swim and dive or men’s lacrosse, but another team deserves its time in the spotlight. The Virginia club polo team has quietly been one of the nation’s very best programs and a prominent leader in the sport. Coming off of their 11th national championship victory in April, the Cavaliers have proven time and time again that with all the pressure in the world, they will still deliver.
The penalty shot is one of the most nerve-wracking moments an athlete can ever face. Now imagine a penalty shot with seven seconds remaining on the clock in a tied National Championship game. When facing down this situation, though, rising fourth-year College student Alana Benz barely flinched.
The Hawai’i native choked up on her mallet, urged her pony forward and smacked the ball into Texas A&M’s goal. Strangely, though, in this moment of joy — in a moment winning her second Division I women’s polo national championship in three years, the program’s eleventh in total, and gaining revenge on a hated rival — Benz did not celebrate.
“Honestly, I didn't know how much time was left,” Benz said. “I didn't know if we had time for another throw-in, so I do not want to celebrate too early.”
Benz waited for a restart in play that never came. Instead, defeated, the Aggies began to hug each other as the clock ticked towards double zeroes. After checking the scoreboard to make sure Virginia Women’s Polo’s eleventh national championship was final, Benz and her teammates finally celebrated.
National championships are immortal, especially in sports with as much behind-the-scenes work as the sport of kings. The Virginia Polo Club is well-funded, well organized and hungry. Their operation trumps that of most, if not all, other club sports at the University.
It all starts at the Virginia Polo Center, where there always seems to be activity. On the day The Cavalier Daily toured the facility — 10 days after Benz’s game-winning penalty shot — there was a lone rider on the field, accompanied by a coach in a Kubota. Her mallet swings, the coach’s camera pans and a black Labrador Retriever chases the plastic ball careening towards the wood-plank goal. There are a handful of club members around, working with ponies and tack. Horses whinny and flick their tails at flying insects.
The Polo Center’s 75-acre grounds feature indoor and outdoor arenas, each roughly the size of football fields. There are dozens of stable stalls, seemingly limitless tack, a handful of paddocks and a hilltop clubhouse, designed by Coach Lou Lopez’s son. Another dozen or so acres are leased out to a contractor who is reseeding it for polo play with expensive bermuda grass.
48 horses — known as “polo ponies”, or just “ponies” — are housed at the Polo Center, serving the varsity men’s and women’s squads, the club team and a high school development program. Each team uses between eight and ten ponies per match, switching them out every play, or “chukker” — the equivalent of a quarter in football.
The Polo Center is set up to care for the ponies. A rotation of students take turns mucking the stables and feeding the ponies. There is also a quiet retirement area for ponies too old to keep playing the young horse’s game. The retirement area currently houses half a dozen horses, with plenty of space to roam and lots of food to eat.
The varsity players are singularly dedicated to the cause of winning as much as any other athletes at the University. In addition to regular mucking duties, players have three official practices per week and are strongly encouraged to spend time on the ponies participating in individual skills training. This leads to a lot of time on the grounds of the Polo Center, and the players often find it easier to watch film and do homework from the comfort of the clubhouse.
“You don't have to worry about finding a study spot,” Benz said.
With this abundance of resources available to both player and pony, one could be mistaken and conclude that this operation is funded by Virginia Athletics. However, nearly all of this colossal space and its contents were donated by alumni of the program.
“We have a very supportive alumni base,” Lopez said. “They give back to the program because they know while they were in school, they were getting a tremendous opportunity to learn or compete in the sport. Depending on what level you're at, you wouldn't be able to do [this] anywhere else… The program that they had 20 years ago doesn't even compare to what the students get nowadays, but they're still supportive of it.”
Funding can buy you a facility and ponies, but it cannot buy talent. However, that has not been an issue for Virginia — the program has attracted elite polo players from all over the country. Benz is from Oahu, Hawaii, rising second year Engineering student Pippa Harris is from California and Class of 2024 alumna Lea Jih-Vieria is originally from Maryland but used her first three years of eligibility for Cornell’s polo team before transferring to the University for graduate school.
“U.Va. is getting more and more difficult to get into these days,” Lopez said. “But it doesn't deter the list of applicants. Every year, we'll get 10 or 12 [applicants] that want to come to U.Va., because of the type of [polo] program [and] the quality of our horses.”
As the now-11 time national champions, Virginia was likely an option for Jih-Vieria on prestige alone — but proximity between the school and the facility made a huge difference.
“When I was looking at schools to finish out my last year of eligibility, I researched a lot of these [club polo] programs,” Jih-Vieria said. “And when I was trying to decide where I was going to go for my masters, Virginia Polo just really stood out. You just get the most opportunities with the horses.”
While this facility does wonders for keeping its participating students happy, outdoors and in touch with nature, its ultimate goal is different — to fuel a dynasty. Entering 2024, Virginia Women’s Polo had won an astonishing 10 national championships, and the men’s team had 12. Both teams last added to their totals in 2022, with the women defeating University of Kentucky to win the national title.
However, the 2023 season ended in heartbreak. The women’s team advanced to the Division I semifinals but lost on home turf to Texas A&M. Ironically, the Aggies won in a penalty shootout after the teams ended regulation deadlocked. This year marked redemption and a return to championship glory.
Lopez and his players have no intention of sitting on their laurels, though. They are driving for constant improvement in every way. The COVID-19 pandemic led to decreased membership, but efforts are in place to work their way up to the high goal of 35 members. This means recruiting more members from other equine clubs around the University, running more camps and reaching out to more potential high school recruits.
While only three of five 2024 championship players will remain next season, that should not slow the program down too much. After all, Benz was the only holdover from the 2022 team. Virginia Women’s Polo has the funding, the infrastructure, the coaching, the talent pipeline and the ponies needed to continue winning it all. Lopez and returners Harris and Benz look more than set to add to their championship totals in the coming years.
“The dedication to winning national titles is part of our culture,” Lopez said.
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