Twilight Polo Crowd Has an Arena Stage at Great Meadow
By Leonard Shapiro For Middleburg Life
Polo has been John Gobin’s life for as long as he can remember. Practicing, playing, and teaching the game, he’s also carved out a niche for himself around these parts in recent years by overseeing all phases of the sport at Great Meadow Polo in The Plains.
He also runs his own polo school, and his cell phone goes off non-stop at all hours of the day and night. Still, Gobin seems used to the helter-skelter nature of his life’s work. After all, he has farms in Wellington, Florida, Aiken, South Carolina and one not far from Great Meadow, where he also keeps 56 polo ponies.
He also plays competitively in the spring and fall, and from now until the end of the season in September, he and his assistant, Whitney Ross, deal with countless details of staging arena twilight polo matches every Saturday at Great Meadow.
Gobin has been involved with Great Meadow Twilight Polo for ten years, the last four running the show. It’s been so far, so good since at the weekly Saturday night matches now drawing between 2,000 and 3,000 spectators, and occasionally inching toward 4,000.
The action is nonstop, with three different matches that begin at 6 p.m. and finish at about 9 p.m. Every week there’s also a different theme—Disney, beach party, ’70’s Disco—and on Sept. 11, the National Sporting Library & Museum is sponsoring one of several tournaments on the schedule featuring some of the game’s top names.
The nature of the Great Meadow crowds also has changed dramatically since he took over.
“When I first came here, they were trying to shoot for more of a D.C., yuppie audience,” Gobin said. “Now, we’re aiming for more of a family crowd—kids, parents, grandparents. We do a tug of war for kids in the arena at halftime of the games. We’ve got a mascot in a Polo Bear suit. We leave balls and foot mallets in the arena after the games are over so the kids can hit it around.”
There are picnics and tailgates, and a concession stand for those who don’t want to bring their own food and drink. The younger crowd, some local, some coming out from Washington, also is more than welcome, what with a DJ playing tunes, wine from sponsoring Greenhill Winery in Middleburg available to purchase and lots of dancing in the popular pavillion. Sometimes crowds don’t disperse until close to midnight, and the price is always right—$40 per carload.
“The level of play is also much higher and the organization of the matches is much more certain and defined,” said
Rob Banner, president of Great Meadow. “John has done a magnificent job with the quality of the polo and the whole experience. The crowds have definitely grown. Families bring their kids to the matches. Young adults come for the entertainment and we’ve always had a great local following.”
Facebook has helped, too. Banner takes and posts photos and asks fans to tag themselves in the pictures “so their friends will see them and maybe come out the next Saturday night,” he said. “They’ll bring back other couples or families. People enjoy the $40 price, the arena is a great place to watch it up close, and the polo is pretty darned good.”
Gobin was a pretty darned good high goal player himself. As a professional, he was a seven-goal man and over the years has played on a number of U.S. Polo Association national teams in competitions around the globe.
A native of Rehoboth, Mass., he worked in a local horse barn as a kid, mucking out stalls and grooming horses. He eventually learned to ride well enough so that he was asked to play in local arena games. At age 18, he went to Argentina on his own and stayed three years playing field polo with some of the finest players in the world.
“That’s where I learned to play at speed,” he said.
Now 47, he’s also learned to slow down a bit since badly breaking his arm a few years ago and spending three days in the hospital. “It’s a young man’s game,” Go- bin said. “When I broke my arm, that was definitely a sign.”
Gobin, Ross and another assistant, South African Aaron Pagel, also have between 20 and 30 students at their polo school, including several older players who have become so enamored with the game, they’ve formed their own teams. Some even compete in Twilight Polo.
Gobin takes great pride in his thriving Virginia polo operation and clearly, a lifelong work ethic has made it all possible.
“Being an American professional polo player, it was difficult to get opportunities,” he said. “Basically, I had to outwork everyone, work twice as hard as the competition. That’s never changed.”
At Saturday Twilight Polo at Great Meadow, that’s also obvious.