Polo tailgaters know how to throw a party

It’s like hockey on horses, but with a baseball atmosphere and lots of food.

That’s how a sophisticated friend of mine described polo to me when I told her I would be attending a match for the first time.

She was not wrong, nor were the people, including my editor, who advised me to show up a few hours early. That’s when the hardcore tailgaters arrived, they said, and it’s quite the spectacle.

As I entered general admission parking at the Sarasota Polo Club in Lakewood Ranch with my windows rolled down on a gorgeous 80 degree Sunday, I was greeted by the smell of charcoal.

I immediately felt at home as I remembered back to the tailgating at the University of Missouri with tents everywhere, lawn games being played, beer bottles lying outside the base of a trashcan and smiles all around. The only difference was the polo crowd could handle its alcohol much better than the Missouri student body.

Walking around the lot, I tried to find things out of the ordinary. I soon did. A collection of ribbons was displayed on the side of a tent toward the middle of the lot. I discovered that this was the home base of The Chukker Crumbs, a tailgate group that has been attending games together for about 10 years, according to Chukker Crumbs organizer Jane Waddell.

On any given Sunday, the group will feature 10 to 25 people, and has won awards from the club for best burger (2015), best dessert (2007) and best decor (2007), among others. The group also provides a service for fans who cannot see the scoreboard on the far side of the field, hanging homemade flags with the correct chukker (or period) number off their tent, letting fans keep track of how much game is left. The flags gave each chukker a nickname, such as the Up Chukker (third period).

Waddell said the group was a merging of two separate groups, Waddell’s yachting friends and Dennis O’Brien’s tennis friends. They started parking next to each other at every match, started chatting, and the rest is history.

Waddell said three keys make a successful polo tailgate — good food, good music and good people. Sometimes, the simplest advice is the best. As Waddell put it, tailgates should be "a time for fun and frivolity."

O’Brien outlined the overall club set-up.

“Over there,” he said, pointing across the field to a grassy lot, “That’s the season ticket holders. That’s the cognoscenti. This side is the common folk.

“They have fancier cars over there, but we have all the fun.”

I want to state there was an actual polo game played on Jan. 15, I promise, and it was pretty darn fun to watch. The match was the championship game of the 2017 United States Polo Association Governor’s Cup. Whiskey Pond took home the trophy, and Nick “Babyface” Johnson won tournament MVP. It must take incredible coordination to swing a mallet and shoot on target while on horseback, and the horses are magnificent beasts to admire in their own right.

It’s just that they were somewhat of a side show.

People had one eyeball on the field and one on their company. In another similarity to Missouri football games, the polo match was a vessel for families and friends to throw a day party together in a beautiful setting.

Tailgaters were spreading brie on crackers, playing with their dogs, shooting the breeze and sipping the sunshine (and champagne). Mindless pop songs played in the background during stoppages in play.

The game itself contains winks to the real reason people pack the place each weekend. Fans are allowed on the field whenever the riders (or, as the were announced, “gladiators”)  are not. At halftime fans are invited to stomp the divots popped up by hooves back into the ground, and a team of Clydesdales led by George Alexander gives kids a ride around the field in a wagon.

I arrived at the club expecting big hats and fancy finger foods, along with a world where I probably didn't belong. I left a believer. A polo match is the perfect way to spend an afternoon, as long as you’re looking to party.