January 2021 Polo Players' Edition

Page 16

ASK AN UMPIRE

Quick change Adapting to arena after playing or umpiring outdoors By Dana Fortugno

Even the best players have difficulty switching from grass to arena polo.

You have an outdoor game at 3 p.m. and then an arena game at 6 p.m. Whether you’re an umpire or a player, that can be a confusing transition. For the most part, polo is still polo and you will make it through but there are some significant pitfalls that will mess you up—I am willing to bet on it. To be honest (I know of no other way), arena polo is a completely different game than outdoor polo. I’m talking about the rules. It takes 37 rules to govern outdoor polo and only 18 to govern arena polo. Something must be different—right? If you have played both types of polo for many years, your brain likely has categorized both nicely and you can switch back and forth seamlessly—at least before all the changes. In the past five years, we have so many rules changes outdoor and now indoor that your trusty old brain doesn’t seem to help as much as it did years ago (when there were no changes, ever). Good times. We have umpires who literally must umpire an outdoor game and an arena game in the same day. Yes, they are humans, so this can be a problem. We must train them to be able to do that and do it well. Professional umpires can make mistakes and can be forgiven for some mistakes but when it comes to the 14 POLO P L A Y E R S E D I T I O N

rules, there is no forgiveness and no room for error. Our professional umpires have a team and resources behind them to help. I am part of that team and we create the resources they use. The most recent resource (a work in progress, like everything else on my desk) is a quick conversion guide (memory refresher) for outdoor to arena polo. It’s available to everyone in text and video format on the USPA website under arena rules in the video rule book. I need to say that there is no substitute for reading the rules or watching all the rules videos on the video rule book. In fact, when I was traveling every weekend to umpire, I would read the entire arena rules on the plane when going to an arena event. I did that every time and seldom made a rules error, but I never did both outdoor and arena in the same day—that’s a new challenge. We want our umpires to read all the rules, of course, but we need even more help when there is no time to read all 18 arena rules before the event. This guide is meant to be an umpire’s little helper. It has many of the more significant differences between outdoor polo and arena polo. It’s based on the errors we have experienced this past year and on things that outdoor players struggle with


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