Life with the Ponies August 2006 As a child, Peter Carney remembers horses were a common sight in the neighborhood streets of Chicago where he spent the early part of his youth—the cobblestone on Astor Street echoed the clip-clop of “Snooks,” a favorite horse his father kept in the city. Looking to provide a more rural lifestyle for the four Carney children, the family moved to Lake Forest in the mid-1930s and purchased a 20-acre farm on Everett Road, just down the road apiece from their new residence on Green Bay. When a friend of the elder Carney sold him a string of polo ponies, stables were erected on the property (naturally known as The Stables) and a family tradition in polo was born. Peter’s two older brothers quickly developed an interest in the sport and often let the younger Carney walk the horses around the field; he remembers his first foray into polo with a horse named “Daisy” at about age 10. The Carney boys played the game extensively before WWII, but everything seemed to shut down once the war began. Those who were children in the area at the time recall the military at Fort Sheridan shooting anti-aircraft artillery into Lake Michigan for practice; they were also running practice missions onto the land next to The Stables. Polo had to take a backseat to more important issues of the day. In the meantime, Peter continued his education at Princeton and took an interest in geology, later moving to Denver to “explore the Rockies” while working in the oil industry for a time. He also married his lovely wife, Marina, who grew up in Lake Forest about five years behind him—Peter’s sister had something to do with the blind date that originally got them together. In the late ’50s, they moved back to Lake Forest, just about the time that polo was heating up again. The Carney men played often at the Chicago Avenue Armory in the city; polo was also a popular game in Oak Brook at the time. With a multitude of teams now playing, the Carneys and their polo chums formed the Onwentsia Polo Club in 1960. Matches were played at the Onwentsia indoor arena and also at the outdoor field currently located behind Deer Path School, then privately owned by the Swift family (the Lake Forest Polo Match will take place this August 19 in the same location). They regularly played “rivals” from many Midwest cities like Minneapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Drayton, and St. Louis, where the fields got so hot that they had to put ice cubes in their helmets to keep a cool head, recalls Peter. Polo is ancient—initially played in Persia and throughout the Middle East to train nobility and the elite mounted troops of the king. As it evolved into a game, polo became known as the Sport of Kings. In 1876, polo made its debut in the United States and, shortly thereafter, the U.S. Polo Association was formed. The sport was club-based and reached its heyday in the 1920s when thousands of spectators could be drawn by the promise of a good match. Onwentsia played host to many matches well before the Carney family played its field in the early 1900s, hosting the first polo tournament held in the “west” with games featuring many prominent players, such as General George Patton. In about 1975, they stopped playing polo at Onwentsia and the Carneys sold The Stables, marking the end of an era for polo in Lake Forest. The stables used on the Carney property were converted into a private home, and other residential buildings went up all around; Old Elm Road was extended westward, right through the farm. For a while, Peter played at the Tri-State Polo Club off of Delany Road up north a bit—playing visiting teams from as close as Milwaukee and as far away as Kenya. But the game got very expensive, and the price to buy and keep horses went from hundreds of dollars to thousands. “Difficult to justify as a hobby when my wife is sewing the knees on my kids’ pants,” adds Peter. The Carneys have lived here in Lake Forest for years, raising four children with varying interests—Marina Jr., who took to fox hunting as a teenager, currently lives here and is in the real estate business; Sasha now lives in Colorado Springs and prefers fly fishing on the family’s 7,000-acre working ranch in Wyoming; Kathy lives in Dallas now and excelled in tennis as a child here; and Edward, CEO and President of Superior Graphite (the privately held family business for which Peter is Chairman, headquartered in Chicago with six other locations in places such as Sweden and Australia), was on his way to the Ukraine to assist the Department of Defense in finding new uses for rocket fuel at the time of this interview (yes, really). Now, Peter is happy to borrow a polo pony and play in exhibition tournaments here and there—it’s not so bad to play in the Dominican Republic or at Vero Beach for instance; he occasionally plays at Crab Tree Farm in Lake Bluff. When asked if he’s ever gotten scraped up in a match, Peter calmly tells the story about how he accidently knocked out another player’s teeth with a gold mallet swing or about the time he almost lost an eye in another mallet incident. Marina talks about the time she thought he was a “goner” after colliding head on with another player’s horse while playing a team from Wyoming on Swifts Field. “Hooves were all over the place,” she says. “But they were both able to walk away from the crash.” Lake Forest is lucky enough to be able to recreate the history of polo here each summer with the Lake Forest Polo Match, for which Peter is a player; the Match benefits the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society. “The Polo Match really reflects the ‘old’ Lake Forest and a time when you could ride your horses all over town,” he says. The Polo Match (Saturday, August 19 at noon at Deerpath Park) features a dressage event presented by Liberty Farms before the games, in addition to a hat contest for the ladies and treats available from local restaurants. The annual Polo Ball, held the Friday evening before the Match, boast a new location at Shoreacres and an elegant “Denim and Diamonds” theme this year, complete with a western swing band and upscale BBQ. Don’t miss your chance for a glimpse into the rich history of polo in Lake Forest—or the opportunity to see a true master, Peter Carney, at the game he knows so well. Thwack!