Five Minutes on the Sidelines with… Iain Heaton
As many of you will know, in the UK we have a thriving Pony Club polocrosse scene, and Pony Club members now make up almost a third of UKPA membership.
With a new Chairman of Pony Club Polocrosse for 2020, we wanted to find out more about what is on offer for PC players and how UKPA members can get involved and help support these activities. The new Chairman, Iain Heaton, needs no introduction to UK polocrosse, and here he tells us about what 2020 has in store…
Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started first playing polocrosse?
A: I did actually start playing polocrosse in the Pony Club in Norfolk when I was about 12, but our Pony Club only did a few training sessions and then stopped (though we did end up with some old polocrosse sticks that then sat in our tack room for about 5 years!)
I didn’t get another chance to play until I was 17, when the Essex All Blacks put on a taster day at Newmarket. I saw a flyer for it at a local showjumping show and persuaded my mum to take me. I remember practising at home on my horse Bran before we went so that I could actually pick up the ball. I loved the training day and Bran, who was an absolute saint of a horse, took to the game very well and that’s when I started playing properly. The All Blacks were great, really supportive and luckily Jane Venworth, who also played for the club, lived near me in Norfolk so used to transport me and Bran to tournaments, otherwise I would never have been able to play!
Q: How did you go from player to PC Polocrosse Chairman?
A: After a couple of seasons of playing I started to get more and more interested and involved in trying to promote and grow the sport. I redeveloped the All Blacks website after being in the club a few years and then started my own website, Polocrosse Extreme, because I was annoyed that the sport never got any coverage in equestrian magazines.
Just after I left university I was invited onto the UKPA Exec by Dave Brookes (I remember him saying they needed young people who would do things!) and then served on that for quite a few years. Dave was also Chairman of Pony Club Polocrosse and he invited me onto that committee as well after a few years. Roll forwards about ten years and lots of time spent trying to grow the sport, both directly through coaching and organising events and demos, and more remotely through websites and tools like Facebook, and here I am as Pony Club Polocrosse Chairman!
Q: What have been your Pony Club Polocrosse highlights over the last few years?
A: I have been delighted at both the number of new faces we have had coming into the sport and also how the standard at the top levels has just kept improving. Lots of people have done lots of work all round the UK introducing members to the sport and we have seen the benefits of that with new faces appearing at tournaments.
I love watching and commentating on new players, as they just enjoy the sport so much and enjoy achieving new skills. In terms of the standard of play, we ran the first Arena Challenge and the first Four Nations in 2015. If I compare the standard then to the standard of play we had at these two events in 2019 it has really come on in leaps and bounds and we now have players who are playing in the A grade also playing in the Four Nations. That is really inspiring for new Pony Club members coming into the sport as it gives them some great role models.
Q: How can Pony Club members get involved with polocrosse?
A: We are trying to put on lots of open training sessions for Pony Club members to come along and try the sport and it’s great that UKPA clubs are working with us to do that. We can also arrange for polocrosse coaches to go and run taster days for Pony Club Branches and Centres. So if Pony Club members do want to try the sport hopefully we can help them do so. If they can’t find any training sessions near where they live then then just get in touch with us on polocrosse@pcuk.org or via our Pony Club Polocrosse Facebook page and we can help.
Q: What would you say to Pony Clubs who don’t know anything about polocrosse?
A: I would say it is a wonderful, fun sport that can both put smiles on your members faces and also teach them some very useful skills. It helps improve balance and confidence in riding and also it help members understand why they should aim to have a well trained and responsive horse. And members learn while they are having fun which is even better!
Q: How does polocrosse compare to other Pony Club disciplines, are there any transferable skills?
A: There are lots of transferable skills, both riding skills and also ones that help them master the racquet skills. If you can ride well and train a horse to be responsive to light aids then that is incredibly useful in polocrosse, as you really don’t want to waste time or lose the ball because your horse won’t stop or turn when you ask it to. Pony Club members who have done more dressage and flatwork/ schooling will often have the advantage there because they understand more about how to use the correct aids to get the desired response from a horse. For some reason girls are often better than boys at those particular skills…. Then Pony Club members who have done sports like Mounted Games and Polo will often have an advantage in terms of the racquet skills, as they have pretty good hand eye coordination. Polocrosse does also involve some bravery and a desire to go fast, so again Mounted Games and Polo players do enjoy it a lot but also members who like show jumping and going cross country, so really there is something for everyone!
Q: How can UKPA players get involved with Pony Club polocrosse?
A: So we always need umpires for tournaments, and umpiring Pony Club Minis and Juniors can be a good way to help develop your umpire skills so please volunteer to do that! Likewise we are always looking for new coaches and lots of coaches start coaching in Pony Club, often helping out as an assistant coach to run sessions. That way they can learn the best way to run sessions and pick up lots of ideas for training exercises. We always love it when older players go into (or even back into if they were former members themselves!) Pony Club Branches or Centres to help develop the next generation so if you would be keen to do that please talk to me and we can help you do it. The more people we have coaching then the more players we will get coming through in the next few years.
I would just say to people who do coach, don’t expect every member you coach to become as obsessed as you and start playing lots of tournaments. We reckon it’s about 1 in every 20 Pony Club members we introduce to the game who start playing regularly and will become a full UKPA member. If you think about other sports like show jumping that’s fairly typical, lots of people will jump a bit but they won’t all become a British Showjumping member. So don’t be disheartened or think it’s something you have done if they don’t all immediately stop doing everything else and take up polocrosse full time; it’s a numbers game and the more you get to try the sport the more who will ultimately play it a lot.
Q: What does Pony Club Polocrosse have to offer older PC members who play in UKPA?
A: We have looked to add more for older members in the last five years with the Four Nations and events like the Pony Club Australia tour. However, in truth we know that older members will leave the Pony Club at some point, I mean they have to leave at 25, and we are not going to be able to run international tours every year. We don’t think it’s our role to compete with the UKPA tours and squad system, our focus is on growth and on getting members playing the sport. So we will run our current events and look to make them as good as possible, with the open grades at the highest possible standard and with the best possible prizes. We will keep running the Four Nations and we are looking at doing an international tour every two years, which I think are two great opportunities for our best players to showcase their talents and hopefully they enjoy them!
Q: What does Pony Club Polocrosse have in store for 2020 and beyond?
A: We are heavily focused on growing the sport in Pony Club so I would hope we will see more and more new players coming in over the next few years. That means there will be lots of training events going on and hopefully more and more local tournaments for members around those areas to take part in, as we get a few Branches or Centres in each area playing.
From a central perspective, we will be running our Arena challenge in April and the Championships in August, and we are also hopefully going to run an Autumn Challenge again in September as that seemed to go well in 2019.
We will run the Four Nations in 2021 and that should be a great event again and a chance for our members from all around the UK to show just how good they are. We are looking at doing an overseas tour, possibly to Australia, but haven’t managed to get the details of that quite sorted out yet. We are also talking to a few other Pony Club countries about overseas tours so there could be some different locations and teams appearing in the future!