U S PA B U L L E T I N
Mountain View Polo
LAURA GODDARD
Charles Town, West Virginia
Mountain View Polo Club is hidden away in a lush forest, on a ridge overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Hidden away in a lush forest with an arena positioned on a ridge overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is clear the spectacular natural landscape inspired the naming of Mountain View Polo Club. As the only USPA member club in West Virginia, Mountain View’s primary focus is creating and developing low-goal players with affordability in mind. Utilizing intercollegiate and interscholastic teaching methods, it helps players build a solid foundation in the arena. Located just an hour outside of the nation’s capital of Washington D.C. in the Eastern corner of the state, Mountain View invites its members and students to escape bustling city life and enjoy polo in a safe and inclusive environment. Founded in 2010 and officially joining the USPA in 2012, Mountain View Polo Club was built entirely from the ground up by Dr. Laura Goddard and Hugo Pasten. The two established a new polo school and trained lesson horses with their experience from Capitol Polo Club (now known as Congressional Polo Club). “We bought and trained all the lesson horses ourselves because we couldn’t afford to buy made 10 POLO P L A Y E R S E D I T I O N
polo ponies,” Goddard, an I/I alumna (1994-97), said. Learning to play at Cornell University while studying entomology, Goddard continued at the University of California, Davis, helping run and coach the existing polo club through six years of graduate school. “After graduation, I still wanted to play, but I was a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health [Bethesda, Maryland], and the only way I could afford it was to teach in exchange to play,” Goddard said. “I set up a polo school with then Fifth Chukker Polo Club [which became Capitol Polo Club] and gained a lot of students in Poolesville, Maryland, over six years.” Searching for a spacious and affordable farm to board her string, Goddard took advantage of a buyer’s market in 2010 and purchased a foreclosed property situated in a rural, residential area that would become her own Mountain View Polo Club. Featuring a house on the property built in the early 1800s, the club pays homage to the original farm’s name, Mountain View Farm, painted on the wall in the basement.
