McLean is filled with athletes. It is fair to say that Highlanders cover a broad variety of sports. Sports like
football and color guard. Sports like basketball and rowing. Even sports that require you to hit a ball, while riding a horse at almost 40 mph on a field that is 9 times the size of a football field. This sport is Polo.
Senior Jon Bikoff was the first to start playing competitive polo at McLean.
“I wanted to do a sport with a little bit more action. I have tried hockey and other action sports, but I just stumbled on it online and decided to try it.”
His passion for the polo quickly grew. Soon, he urged his two senior friends Sander Altman and Alp Corekci to try it out as well.
“Jon was the first who started and then he got Alp and me to come play with him,” Altman said. “At first we were not really interested, but after a while we got really into it and since then we have been playing all the time.”
During the season, the self-pronounced McLean Polo Team practices 3 to 4 times a week at the Battlefield Park Polo Club near Gainesville.
“Our practice schedule has fluctuated a lot recently,” Altman said. “Practice would usually be we get there, spend 30 minutes getting horses and tacking them. We’d spend 20 – 30 minutes warming up, and then about 30 minutes scrimmaging with some of the people there. Then after practice we’d spend about an hour doing work around the barn, like washing the horses, putting them in the right fields, making sure they have food and water, and cleaning the tack.”
Last summer, Bikoff and Altman worked at the Virginia National Polo Club in Upperville, Virginia.
“It was one of the most exhausting jobs I have done,” Bikoff said. “We had to feed them all, groom them all, exercise them all. It was exhausting, but also a ton of fun.”
While they were required to work long hours, the boys had ample time to play polo. They practiced 6 times a week and competed in various tournaments during their time there.
“When we were working over the summer, Jon and I played at this Youth Tournament,” Altman said. “They have them all around the country. It’s a tournament to see the best players in the nation and we got to play that and actually won that… In addition, when we were working there, the club owner played on a team in a tournament. She was gone one week, so she asked me to fill in to play for her. So I got to play on a team with a bunch of people way better than me. It was intimidating, but it was really awesome. I was a really fast-paced and probably the most intense game I got to play in.”
One of the advantages of polo is that it yields itself to playing at a professional rate during a player’s beginner stage.
“The cool thing about polo is that you get to play with the highest level of professionals,” Bikoff said. “Even though I am an amateur, I get to play, for example, with international players.”
McLean Polo, in particular, has had a lot of rare opportunities to blossom, despite their unofficial club status.
“We have been playing just over a year and we have already had sponsors for our team, we have gotten to play with professions, we have played in big tournaments. We have had a lot of cool experiences,” Altman said. “It’s kind of out of our league.”
Bikoff and Altman are determined to continue their polo careers. Indiana University, the college both will likely be attending in the fall, does not have a polo team. However, they are already thinking about plans to start a team at college.
