The future of polo in Hawaii is increasingly dependent on women, as evidenced by the number playing on opening day at the Hawaii Polo Club, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.
Polo remains a male- dominated sport at the top. But the Hawaii Polo Club is galloping into action this season with plenty of women in the club, and an inaugural interscholastic polo team on Oahu made up entirely of teen girls: Katherine Barry- Bush, Winnie Lee, Ava Coudrier and Leiana Dewey.
It’s fitting that the interscholastic team is coached by Devon Dailey, grandson of Fred and Murph Dailey, who formed the Waikiki Polo Club, which brought polo back to Kapiolani Park in the 1950s and 1960s and was the precursor of the Hawaii Polo Club in Mokuleia, which was founded in 1963 and had its season opener April 9. Murph Dailey was part of a short list of polo’s women pioneers, including Virginia Merchant, Jorie Butler Richardson and Sue Sally Hale, who in 1972 were officially recognized as U.S. Polo Association registered members and assigned a handicap.
Devon Dailey, who is now general manager of the Hawaii Polo Club and an accomplished polo player in his own right, said he didn’t set out to create an all-female interscholastic team but that the composition reflects the trend nationally and at the local club.
“There are far fewer boys nationally here than there are girls competing,” Dailey said. “We haven’t done a good enough job of trying to steal boys from rodeo. Pretty much all the boys that know how to ride would be at the rodeo, but even at the rodeo there are more girls by probably like 2-to-1.”
Barry-Bush and Lee said their team made it to the semifinals in California in February. In 2024, they said, they are aiming to take nationals. Dailey, who played on an interscholastic team on Maui while he was young, said they are part of a team of strong players putting in the work to succeed.
“The kids are good. They aren’t junk players,” he said.
Barry-Bush, who was introduced to polo by professional equestrian Siri Masterson, said horses and polo have become her passion. She practices nearly every day and competes in skirmishes about three times a week. During her off time she works at the Hawaii Polo Club caring for the horses and giving horse riding and polo playing lessons.
“She taught me how to ride a horse, and she handed me a polo mallet and said, ‘You are going to learn to play polo.’ I loved it,” Barry-Bush said. “I get to run around really fast on horses and chase the ball. I get to get a little violent with it.”
Lee, who has four horses, also works at Hawaii Polo Club exercising and grooming privately owned horses and loaner horses. She said her parents don’t ride, but it’s in her blood as her great- grandparents had horses on their property in Fort Bragg, Calif.
“Polo is a lot harder than just riding a horse,” she said. “I like the aggression. It’s fun to win.”
Dailey said, “Polo is kind of like horse racing and hockey put together. You can come in and hit each other really good.”
He said in the early days polo was dominated by men likely because women’s athletics wasn’t what it is now, and because the sport of polo is rooted in the cavalry, where riders once used swords instead of mallets. But much has changed since the days when his grandmother Murph Dailey; his mother, Becca Dailey; and other female polo players were carving out a place for themselves in the sport.
Barry-Bush’s teacher Masterson, who is also a big-wave surfer, said that 15 years ago when she first started playing polo, she was one of only a few who regularly played in the state. Though she had historic examples of strong female polo players like the Dailey women, Masterson said she was largely mentored in polo by men.
She said it’s been her privilege to pay it forward by mentoring Barry-Bush, who “works hard for it every day.”
Masterson said, “She gives me the gift of leaving a legacy. She’s a fiery little ginger with a lot of passion for the sport.”
She said shifting cultural attitudes as well as growth in equal rights and pay for women have created more opportunities, especially for the next generation of female polo players to pursue higher levels of play.
“The trajectory in Hawaii for women in polo changed about seven years ago. At first it was a slow snowball, but now it’s rolling fast,” Masterson said. “I hope to see a woman win one of the major worldwide tournaments in my lifetime. Women are just going to keep getting better and better. There’s nowhere to go but up.”
According to the USPA, more than 40% of its club members are now female, which is the fastest-growing segment in the sport at the club level. Unlike other team sports, women and men play polo together as equals; however, until recently, women have had far fewer competitive chances than their male counterparts.
“In the past five years, they just added a separate handicap system for the women’s tournaments so that they can run them more accurately,” Devon Dailey said. “We are now into our second and third generation of having a lot of players, so they have all of these sponsors and pros and stuff that wasn’t prevalent 20 years ago.”
It wasn’t by chance that the 2023 U.S. Open Women’s Polo Championship took place at the U.S. Polo Association Stadium Field in Florida on March 19, International Women’s Day. Meghan Gracida, USPA Women’s Committee chair, said in a statement, “Not only do these athletes exude incredible tenacity and strength on the field, but they also do off of the field. From lawyers, to entrepreneurs, to mothers, to movie producers, to students, to animal conservationists and more, the contestants in this year’s Open fully show what a woman is capable of in their off-field endeavors.”
Gracida added, “It is the great sport of polo that brings all of these women together to empower one another as players while exhibiting their love for the ultimate four-legged teammates: horses.”
It wasn’t until 1990 that a U.S. Women’s Open was officially sanctioned, and it wasn’t officially recognized as a national tournament until 2011. But women in polo have quickly been making up for lost time.
In 2022, female polo athletes got their first polo World Cup event. Held April 9-16 in Argentina, the event included teams from Argentina, the United States, England, Ireland, Brazil and Italy. It added to the possibilities that women have in the sport ranging from the FIP Nations Cup, Women’s World Championship and other events in women- specific leagues.
American Erica Gandomcar told The Associated Press on the occasion of the women’s World Cup polo competition that she remembers her failed attempts to convince the leaders of her country’s polo association that they should organize a world-class championship for women.
“Polo has been dominated by men for a long time. And now women in general, all over the world, are being heard,” said Gandomcar, who is part of a committee of the United States’ polo association. “For years we tried to organize a women’s polo tournament. This is a dream come true.”
Dailey said the growth of women in polo also is good for the long-term viability of the Hawaii Polo Club, which has sometimes struggled during economic downturns due to the costs associated with caring for horses. He said recent supply chain issues have caused feed prices to go up by 30% to 40%.
The pandemic also caused disruptions to the 2020 season. In 2021 the club launched a late season but was still under pandemic rules. International players returned in 2022. But this year’s opener drew one of the club’s largest crowds in modern times.
“Female players have been a huge lifeline. Without them we would lose half of the club at least, and there would be a lot more yelling,” Dailey said. “In my grandfather’s era it was pretty regular that they had fistfights and stuff like that. We generally don’t have that kind of stuff.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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