A well-exercised McGoo gives Captain Shaurya Singh ’25 a nuzzle.PHOTO: MEG TALIKOFF ’25

“A lot of the tack is for the horses, to protect them,” says Dylan Bush ’27 MD, a 29- year-old medical student. Colorful stockings support the horses’ ankles. Braided tails can’t get caught in polo mallets. “Even the bald guy can braid,” jokes Maguire Anuszewski ’23, ’27 MD, a med student with more hair on his face than his head. 

When Captain Shaurya Singh ’25 joined the Polo Club in 2022, the competition team had only four members. Singh made it his mission to get the club back on its feet, starting by ensuring affordability. Today, there are full JV and varsity squads for men and women.

Jamie Campbell ’27 was also a key figure in the club’s rapid revival. He grew up on a farm in Kentucky where a “polo family” boarded their horses. He rarely played. Then, the summer after his junior year of high school, the boarders asked him to gallop their horses around the pasture. “It’s like he becomes a part of the horse. It’s like he’s a centaur,” his mom remembers. 

When he came to Brown, he didn’t want to stop riding. So he signed up for the Polo Club. At the same time, Newport Polo decided to expand its partnerships with local universities. Campbell stepped up as an organizer, coordinating carpooling and dragging a giant wooden horse to Brown’s club fair.

Vasquez had been eyeing the Polo Club on the online list of student activities since before she applied to Brown. “Then I was like, no, it’s an Ivy League school; people are probably all really good already.” Vasquez is from La Quinta, California, where she grew up watching local polo matches from first grade through the last year of high school. It was as close as she could afford to get to horses.

Brown Polo Club offers lengthy lessons on a farm overlooking the Atlantic for only $15 weekly­­. Campbell says there is no other university in the country where polo is so affordable, thanks to the generosity of the U.S. Polo Association, Newport Polo, and external donors.

Lessons end at noon—in time for team brunch. For Vasquez, it’s unusual to be up so early. “I wouldn’t go to a 9 a.m. lecture,” she says, “but I will totally come to 9 a.m. polo.”