Word: uspa
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...likes of the "Bruise Brothers," a pair of upstart investment bankers who compete in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the bread-and-butter players who gather regularly at the Kentree Polo Club in Grand Rapids or the Skaneateles Polo Club in upstate New York. Membership in the U.S. Polo Association (USPA) has nearly doubled since 1977, to more than 2,300 people. There are now about 200 polo clubs across the U.S. Even businessmen in their 40s are taking up the game, says Steve Gose, owner of the 250-member Retama Polo Center in San Antonio. "They're like weekend duffers...
...There still is that high-tea image that the game has," says Polo Magazine Managing Editor Tim Sayles, "yet perhaps half if not more of the membership of USPA is working people. There is a heavy dose of cowboy influence in polo today, which is the direct opposite of the aristocratic image of the game. A lot of the really good players are Texans and Oklahomans." Palm Beach, of course, remains the game's winter Elysium, but even there the fabled fields of the Royal Palm have been joined in the past seven years by two less stodgy polo clubs...
There are 35,000 American jumpers, including 17,000 addicts who belong to the U.S. Parachute Association. The number of jumpers has stayed about the same in the '70s. "When jumping started, there was a period of meteoric growth," says USPA Executive Director Bill Ottley. "Then all the kooky experimenters went into hang gliding and rock climbing...
Jumpers range in age from 16 to well into the 70s. George McCulloch of Syracuse is 73; he has 875 jumps and still does eight-man team work. Eleven percent of USPA members are women. They fly on many of the teams here at the turkey meet. At first, in the years after World War II, most sport jumpers were ex-paratroopers. Now they are your neighbors, your sons and daughters...
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