Polo has long been known as the sport of kings, but for a few years during the early 1930s in Georgetown and the Texas Hill Country, it became the sport of cowboys. Polo was introduced to the United States around 1876 and soon afterward Texas became known for its tough, agile cowponies that were ideal for the sport.
In Junction, to the west of Fredericksburg, was a rancher named O. W. Cardwell, an experienced livestock breeder who would later establish his name as one of the developers of the American Quarter Horse. Despite having only one arm, Cardwell became an accomplished polo player. He, his children, and friends on neighboring ranches played polo regularly, but they did it Texas-style, using the western boots, hats, and saddles they used every day. Cardwell had become known in the polo world as a breeder of good ponies, shipping them to the eastern United States.
In 1929, the desire for education drew the Cardwell family to Georgetown. Cardwell leased his ranch in Junction and moved the family east to thriving Georgetown, where he enrolled his children in Southwestern University. When he made the move, he brought with him a string of about 35 horses and found property just west of Georgetown to lease.
Once here, he met the Weir family who lived on a ranch just west of Georgetown along the South San Gabriel River. Doc Weir was also interested in polo and training ponies, and the two families formed the core of the Georgetown Polo Team. Doc Weir’s son, Mike Weir, recalled of his father, “The polo was before my time, but my father was probably the best horseman anyone had ever seen.”
Polo Texas-style was different from what was played in the East. Many of the players in the early days used their western saddles and wore their cowboy boots and Stetson Hats. Weir said, “The Texas polo players were inexperienced with mallets, but they were incredible horsemen. Cardwell had a heavy rein and, when he needed to use his arm to hit a shot, he’d hold the rein in his teeth to guide the horse.”
The team had a practice field next to the Weir Ranch, an area now encompassed by IH-35, and they had a game field west on Highway 29. “The practice field was closer, but rocky,” Weir said. “On game days, they’d have some boys lead the ponies across the river and out to the game field.” The Georgetown group regularly faced teams from the area and, in 1932, were invited to play in the Southwest Championship Polo Tournament near Fort Worth. The Georgetown team swept the tournament that year and the followed with a second win the next year.
By the second championship game, the Cardwells had moved back to Junction. Doc Weir continued to play polo and train ponies for a few more years. “He’d take his ponies to the East and play on someone’s team,” Weir said. “There was no money in that, but they would see his ponies and buy them. He would come home and train some more.”
By 1938, the tough, Texas cow ponies were being replaced by Thoroughbreds as the preferred horse for polo. Also, the rising cost of transportation and feed, an IRS change disallowing a tax deduction for the ponies, and the country’s concerns about the war in Europe brought polo to an end in Georgetown.
Today polo is played in some areas of Texas, where competitors still enjoy the click of mallets and thunder of hooves. All that remains of polo in Georgetown, though, is the Weir ranch house, known today as the Page House in Georgetown. For a while, though, it must have been grand!
