A New Beginning for Georgetown Polo 

By Lucienne Bacon 
 

In the fall of 2023, Georgetown University reinstated its polo team and joined the intercollegiate ranks. Calling on the sport’s history at the school and the dedication of students, coaches and the broader polo community, the program has evolved tremendously over the past season.  

Polo has been at GU since 1952. Recently discovered yearbooks and match posters show that the 1960s and ’70s were a competitive time for the Hoyas. The 1966-67 team brought together experienced players from around the country and the world, including Argentina, Iran and Mexico. Traveling up and down the East Coast, the team competed against the likes of Cornell, Harvard, Yale and the University of Virginia.  

It is likely that the club went dormant for some time, due to a lack of adequate membership, though it has nearly always been possible to find a polo-playing Hoya on campus. Just before the pandemic, for example, there were a handful of avocational players who would borrow friends’ cars and travel to nearby barns in Virginia or Maryland. Informal matches were occasionally hosted with George Washington University.  

Things began to change at the end of 2022, when current club president Alfonso Pla Zobel de Ayala was introduced to Gustavo Fraga-Errecart, who grew up playing in Argentina, saw his son through the ranks of interscholastic polo in Maryland, then founded and began directing the College Polo Tour. This student exchange program arranges for college-aged players to travel to the sport’s most popular locations around the world. After he offered to assist Pla Zobel de Ayala in building a fully-functional intercollegiate team, the two began working together to do just that.  

Joined by fellow students Ashley Parekh, Ford Middendorf and Muhammad Bin Talal, Pla Zobel de Ayala created a board to officiate the club within the school, then recruited eight students from a variety of horseback-riding and polo-playing backgrounds. After registering with the U.S. Polo Association, Fraga-Errecart put together a match schedule that would give the Hoyas the opportunity to compete across the East Coast and eventually at Southeastern Regionals. By December, Georgetown University Club Polo was the largest it had been in program history.  

“We started from scratch with this club in the fall and were able to find a group of players, beginners and advanced, who were eager to practice and travel for matches,” explained Pla Zobel de Ayala. “Our aim is to use this momentum to guarantee that the club is sustainable and can keep growing.”  

Throughout the 2023-24 season, Georgetown has had the opportunity to work with Wayne and Kate Briere of Seneca Polo Club and Dori Burner of Battlefield Park Polo Club to host weekly practices. Additional assistance through clinics has come from Amir Pirasteh of Natania Polo Club, Annie Rogers, Connor Deal and Patricio Fraga-Errecart.  

The extent and variety of this support has allowed the team to create a robust program that can support both new and experienced players. As they traveled from Harvard to Cornell, UVA to Garrison Forest, players who had been introduced to polo in August had the opportunity to participate in their first intercollegiate match, while those who had years of experience with field polo became better arena players.  

For several Hoyas, a highlight of the season was a trip to Pilar, Argentina, as members of the third College Polo Tour last November. Alongside 18 other university students, Fraga-Errecart and Soledad Secchi arranged for them to play at La Fija Polo Club, tour the facilities of La Hache Polo Club and watch one of the semifinal matches of the Argentine Open. Additionally, they were introduced to a number of high-goal players, among them Sapo Caset, Lolo Castagnola and Cruz and Ruso Heguy, as well as polo photographer Pablo Ramirez.  

Back in the U.S., the Hoya men’s team (Ford Middendorf, Hamilton “Max” Gundlach, Benedikt Jaenecke, Muhammad Bin Talal and Alfonso Pla Zobel de Ayala) traveled to the University of Virginia to participate in the Division II Southeastern Regionals on March 1. Defeating Virginia Tech with a final score of 21-5, the team clinched a spot in the 2024 Division II Men’s National Intercollegiate Championship, hosted at Central Coast Polo Club in Los Osos, California.  

Despite losing to Cornell in the final, the team won against Texas Tech in the semifinals and earned the title of Reserve National Champion. At the end of the week, Gundlach was named a USPA DII All-Star and Middendorf received the Clyde C. Waddell Jr. Memorial Sportsmanship Award.  

In seven months, the team has evolved from reinstatement at Georgetown and with the USPA to being competitive and accomplished in the Intercollegiate/Interscholastic (I/I) ranks. The club has become a space where passion for the sport of polo and a commitment to improvement is bringing students together as athletes and friends. From practices in Virginia and Maryland to matches that take them across the country and the world, the program’s existence and success is a testament to the opportunities that lie within I/I polo.  

More information about the GU Polo Team is available from Polo Head Coach Gustavo (Gus) Fraga-Errecart, who can be reached at gf347@georgetown.edu.