Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing
team. Riders score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using
a long-handled mallet. The traditional sport of polo is played at speed on a large grass field and each
polo team consists of four riders and their mounts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro4MoOLixG4&NR=1
Activity: Perimeter and Area, Scale (Geometry)
1. A regulation polo field is three times the width and three times the length of a football field. If a
football field is 50 yards by 100 yards (see diagram above), what would be the dimensions of a polo
field? Draw a scaled drawing of a polo field on the grid provided.
2. Calculate the area of a football field.
Calculate the area of a polo field.
3. What is the relationship between the area of a polo field and the area of a football field?
4. If a polo field was double the width and double the length of a football field, what would be the
relationship between this new area and the original area of the football field?
Answers:
1. dimensions would be 150 yards by 300 yards, on the grid it should be 9 blocks by 18 blocks
2. area of football field 5000 sq yards, area of polo field 45000 sq ft
3. polo field is 45000/5000 = 9 times bigger
4. doubling each side results in 2 X 2 = 4 times bigger area
The field
The playing field is 300 yards long by 160 yards wide, the approximate area of nine American football
fields. The playing field is carefully maintained with closely mowed turf providing a safe, fast playing
surface. Goals are posts which are set eight yards apart, centered at each end of the field. The surface
of a polo field requires careful and constant grounds maintenance to keep the surface in good playing
condition. During half-time of a match, spectators are invited to go onto the field to participate in a
polo tradition called "divot stamping", which has developed to not only help replace the mounds of
earth (divots) that are torn up by the horses' hooves, but to afford spectators the opportunity to walk
about and socialize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro4MoOLixG4&NR=1
Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing
team. Riders score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using
a long-handled mallet. The traditional sport of polo is played at speed on a large grass field and each
polo team consists of four riders and their mounts.
Games are often played with a handicap in which the sum of the individual players' respective
handicaps are compared. The team with the lower handicap is given the difference in handicaps as
goals before the start of the game.
Polo handicaps a system created by H. L. Herbert, first president of The Polo Association (USA) in
1888 so that teams could be more evenly matched when assessing players of varied abilities. The
players are rated on a scale from minus 2 to 10. Minus 2 indicates a beginning or novice player, while
the player rated at 10 goals denotes the highest handicap possible. So difficult is it to attain a 10-goal
handicap that there are fewer than a dozen in the world today, and 90% of all players handicapped are
rated at 2 goals or less. It is not, nor has ever been, an estimate of the number of goals a player might
score in a game, but rather his worth to his team. It is an overall rating of a player's horsemanship,
team play, knowledge of the game, strategy and horses, and at one time polo was the only sport in the
world that considered sportsmanship when rating a player.
In matches played by handicapped players (as opposed to open competition where handicaps are not
considered), the handicaps of all four players are added up. If the total handicap of a team is more than
the team against which they are playing, the difference is added to the scoreboard. For example, if 'The
Mounties' polo team has a total handicap of 6 goals and 'Tayto' polo team has a handicap of 4 goals,
'Tayto' would start with a 2 goal advantage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo
Activity: Adding integers (pre-algebra)
The sum of the handicaps for the four polo players determines what level tournament a team can
compete in. To play in a 2 goal tournament, the total of the entire team’s handicaps would have to add
up to exactly 2.
1. Could a team consisting of a negative one player, a zero player, a one player and a three player
compete in a 2 goal tournament? Justify your answer.
2. Give 5 different possible player combinations if a team wants to compete in a 2 goal tournament.
3. In your opinion, which of the possible teams proposed in question 2 would have the best chance to
win? Justify your answer.
Answers:
1. No. -1 + 1 + 0 + 3 = 3
2. Possible solutions
Handicaps are too high
-1, -1, 1, 3
-1, 1, 1, 1
3. No real correct answer, just good discussion
0, 0, 0, 2
-1, 0, 1, 2
0, 0, 1, 1