Blog Post #2 My New Hobby, Polo

  Hello fellow blog enthusiasts, welcome back to "What will it be today?", a quick read of random frivolous information of some sort, that you may find interesting. Today is Polo, my new one word hobby.      

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/persian-polo-game-granger.jpg

 Let me formally introduce myself as you should probably know a little bit about me. My name is Amber Berger and I'm a bit over fifty, currently enrolled in Glendale Community College as a returning student. Besides work, school and grandkids of course the demands of life, I recently decided to pick up another hobby, POLO. Yes, the kind you play on horseback. You might be thinking in the fashion world, the polo a popular short sleeve soft collar shirt(Thank you Ralph Lauren), with the iconic emblem of a horse and rider, embroidered onto the left front panel. Technically it is the teams game jersey. 

  The sport of Polo is old, no one really knows how old except that it may have originated in the nomadic tribes of early Persia (now Iran) around six-hundred B.C. to one-hundred A.D.  It spread throughout the rest of the world. Noble men, and even women played and over the years the game has slightly changed, but for the most part it's the same concept. The object of the game is to swat at a ball up and down of what amounts to a soccer field, with two poles on either end. Just hit the ball between them, with a mallet from the back of a horse, sound easy? It's not at all, as I found out the other day on my first lesson, one skill does not equal another skill just because they include each other in the same game.  So far I have learned to strike the ball with four different swings, you wouldn't believe how heavy the mallet is. Also we don't use the end of it we use the flat front part, so you must have a firm grip on it so it doesn't slip out of your hand, we do have toggles for back up in case we drop it.

    This gentleman holds a mallet and is the ultimate Polo enthusiast while he models the teams jersey well. [Photo Courtesy YOUTUBE.com]

  

  So far that is about my extent of knowledge and learning of the first class, I hope to keep up and not get hurt in this intense game. If you would like to read about the history of Polo here is a link for you to follow.https://www.polomuseum.org/sport-polo/history-polo. Thank you for reading and hopefully next time I will have an exciting story to tell you.