Leaping obstacles with the help of polo ponies

LAKEVILLE — Brandon Rease, age 16, was working with Billy, who is a polo pony. The word “pony” is misleading. Billy, a full-sized horse who used to race, had Billy running around a circular enclosure at the Gomez farm on Wells Hill Road last week.The goal was to remind Billy that “I am in control,” Brandon said. “When I want him to do something, he does it.”The horse was jogging along counter-clockwise. At a word from Brandon, Billy turned on a dime and went back in the other direction.It was the last couple of days at the farm for Brandon, who returns to his home in Philadelphia, Pa., this week. His friend Daymar Rosser headed back a few days earlier.The young men are from neighborhoods of Philadelphia where horses are extremely rare. Playing polo is even more unusual.But Brandon, Daymar and others are involved with a program called Work to Ride, which teaches young people from what Brandon calls “pretty rough” neighborhoods how to care for horses, how to ride, how to play polo.The WTR teams do pretty well, winning regional and national competitions.Terri Brennan of Lakeville is the local connection with Work to Ride. She has accompanied the organization’s polo teams to an international competition in northern Nigeria in the last few years. Brennan doesn’t find the idea of inner-city kids playing polo incongruous at all.“Polo isn’t all Greenwich or Bridgehampton,” she said.Several colleges maintain polo teams on some level, and in ranch states such as Wyoming polo clubs are common. Which makes sense. To play polo, the first two necessary elements are a) horses and b) open space.In the east, an indoor version is played in an arena roughly the size of a hockey rink.And in northern Nigeria, where the equine tradition goes back centuries, the game is played with great pomp and intensity.Work to Ride was founded in 1994 by Lezlie Hiner, who started an equestrian program at a Philadelphia horse barn and park that went unused when the city police disbanded its mounted unit.“Lezlie’s a career horsewoman,” said Brennan. And she found that not only did kids from the surrounding neighborhoods enjoy working with the horses — even mucking out stalls — but they really took to the sport of polo.Brennan had retired her own string of ponies, and after seeing a magazine article about Work to Ride, decided to get involved.She also donated all her polo equipment.“Everything is hand-me-down.”The program provides the youngsters with a “safe haven,” Brennan said. Participants sign a one-year contract that requires them to maintain their grades in school. If necessary, tutors are provided.The participants rotate barn chores. Older kids who have been around a couple of years take over as barn managers.“Horses have a good effect on kids with trauma,” Brennan said. It’s not therapy, she added.“It’s informal.”The results are impressive. “Some of the kids are the first in their family to graduate high school or go to college,” said Brennan. Some have received scholarships at the Valley Forge Military Academy.And simply by traveling, whether to Yale or Cornell to play, or to visit the emir of Katsina (whose great-grandfather brought polo to Nigeria in 1909), the youngsters are exposed to a wider world, far from the struggles of the inner city.Brandon said he spent the summer training horses, doing barn chores, weeding, mowing.“Playing a little bit of polo,” he added.“And ...,” prompted Brennan.“Oh yeah, my summer reading list.”Brandon said the travel and exposure to other people have made a difference in his life.“I’ve seen a lot, things that a kid from my neighborhood would never see.”Brandon said that while his contemporaries are sometimes curious about Work to Ride, “only a few ask about getting involved.”Which he believes is a shame.The program can change the focus for teens, away from “the street corner, the basketball court.”“They’ve never seen anything as spectacular as this,” he said, as he attended to Billy’s hooves.