MAUI NEI

The Dancer idled along the dirt and gravel track on the Makawao side of the Oskie Rice Rodeo Arena. Traffic was spread out. There was no point in riding the motorcycle up into the cloud of dust kicked up by an SUV headed the same way. Curiosity had overcome lassitude. Years of seeing the signs and hearing about the social aspects had finally prompted a visit to the Sunday polo matches.

A friendly guy stepped up with a string of blue tickets in his hand. Admission was $5 per person. He looked to be a paniolo - sweat-stained hat, loose-fitting jeans, scuffed boots and hands that spoke of hard use.

The cowboy also appreciated horses of the internal combustion persuasion. With a blue ticket - the numbers were involved in a halftime drawing - he handed back the fiver. "No charge for a brother biker," he said with a grin.

On the other side of a big archway announcing the Maui Polo Club-Kauonoulu Ranch Polo Field a long string of cars were parked on a slight rise above the 300-yard-by-160-yard playing surface. It would be possible to put nine football fields on the dead-level grass field. It must be the biggest piece of absolutely flat land on the mountain.

Some of the cars and pickup trucks were parked with their noses toward the field so occupants could watch in comfort. Others were turned around so tailgaters wouldn't miss any of the action.

The crowd was a mix of civilians and cowboys who were apparently mostly Hawaiian and Portuguese, but you never can tell for sure Upcountry. A typical sight was the guy in a T-shirt, board shorts and cowboy boots.

Frank Crozier was entertaining the crowd with music, including Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and polo patter. "It's 1:30 Maui time," he announced 10 minutes after the scheduled start of the match between Maui and a team from Oahu.

Crozier identified the players during the "polo parade" with the opposing teams passing each other at midfield. The Maui team was led by "The Hawaiian Hurricane," the club's pro, Herman Louis DeCoite.

He was a professional polo player based in California and played on several championship teams. In true cowboy polo tradition, DeCoite is a team roper, champion bull rider and bareback bronco rider. These days he pays the bills by being a horse trainer.

Two of the players from Oahu were transplants from Argentina, where the first official polo match took place on Sept. 3, 1875. The earliest recorded polo matches on Maui took place in 1889. Polo itself may be the world's oldest team event. The first recorded game took place in 600 B.C. between Turkoman and Persia.

At one time there were three leagues of polo teams on Maui. The Baldwins fielded their own team of family members in 1930 and gained notice by none other than The New York Times when they traveled to the Mainland in 1931 with notable successes. But, then and now, most of the Maui players were cowboys.

The players may get most of the attention, but the real stars of polo seem to be the horses. The so-called ponies combine the sleek build and speed of thoroughbreds with the agility and endurance of a quarter horse. Like a cowboy's cutting horse, polo ponies apparently need little or no direction, always going for a softball-sized white ball.

The match Sunday was played in six, five-minute periods called chukkas with changes in mounts after each chukka. Each player used from four to six horses each. There are four players on a team. The object of the game is to whack the ball through goal posts set eight yards apart at each end of the field. The whacking is done with a limber-shafted mallet sized for the rider and the pony.

Even for someone who is definitely not a cowboy or a member of the horsey set, polo is fun to watch. The biggest thrill comes when a player makes a breakaway shot and races after it, the pony flying with all four legs extended and all four hooves off the ground while the opposition thunders after them.

One behind-the-scenes image was too good not to mention. A cowboy was hosing down a pony. The horse seemed almost to be laughing in pleasure.

The Oahu Blues won 6-3. That sets up a revenge match this coming Sunday. The two teams will play each other in the Ilima Cup, a memorial to DeCoite's mother, Abbie. The match starts at 1:30 p.m. at the field on Freddie Rice's Kaonoulu Ranch above Makawao.

* Ron Youngblood is a former staff writer for The Maui News. His e-mail address is writer@clearwire.net.