131954531
Deeming polo his “passport to the world,” Kareem Rosser has seen his commitment to becoming an accomplished competitor yield journeys to Asia and Africa. While international travel has proven enlightening, the ex-Grays Ferry dweller also enjoys treks throughout America to tout the “sport of kings” and will revel in another trip Nov. 1 to 2 when he captains the Work to Ride squad at the Scottsdale Ferrari-Maserati Polo Championships.
“I love being an ambassador for the game and my team, especially,” the 20-year-old, who has promoted each for more than half his life, said Friday from Colorado State University, where he is a junior business major. “It’s great to have such a large upcoming occasion to be a contributing voice.”
The third edition of America’s largest polo event will find Rosser, who spent roughly four years residing on Taney and Tasker streets, and three other athletes, including Brandon Rease, a recent graduate of The Academy at Palumbo, 1100 Catharine St., venturing to Arizona to face the NCAA champion University of Virginia Cavaliers. Having made their tournament debut last year by downing Harvard University, the Work to Ride roster members will look for another profile-building victory, but no matter the outcome, they will strengthen their bonds with one another and their mammal mates. Such unions have come through their interaction with program founder and coach Lezlie Hiner.
The executive director devised the initiative in 1994, seeing forging connections with horses as a character-building endeavor for 7- to 19-year-olds, who receive free instruction in horse sports, with polo drawing the biggest response, in exchange for maintenance of the animals and their quarters. Centered at Fairmount Park’s Chamounix Equestrian Center, the brainchild has consistently produced enrollees bent on maturing and enduring as winners.
“I thought it would be a great way to grow, make connections and network,” Rosser, the 2011 Polo Training Foundation Male Interscholastic Polo Player of the Year, who in the spring guided his postsecondary facility to the U.S. Polo Association’s National Intercollegiate Championships final, said of his participation, which until recently had him mounting with 18-year-old brother Daymar, the fifth member of their family to help Hiner. “I’ve had many memorable experiences, and with another chance at gaining renown, we’re up for the task of taking on a great team.”
Work to Ride will compete as the U.S. High School entrant based on its having captured the ’11 and ’12 National Interscholastic Polo Championships and will face its lauded opponent in Nov. 2’s first match. With a tremendous track record that includes the ’05 Eastern Regional Interscholastic Polo Tournament crown, an ’03 HBO “Real Sports” profile, distinction in ’99 as the first African-American polo team in the nation and a ’94 Sports Illustrated piece, Work to Ride aims to provide spectators with added appreciation for the relationship between animals and humans, with the decision to have notable young mounters face one another destined to make onlookers excited about the sport’s possibilities.
“Pitting high school versus college champions is interesting from a sporting perspective,” spokesman Mike Saucier said. “Not only that, it’s polo upstarts versus the most storied program in college polo.”
Mindful of their overall growth, Rosser and Rease have hit ages where they regularly contemplate how much longer they can continue as competitors. Regardless of the number of goals he scores or prevents, the latter individual credits polo for intensifying his self-belief and gratitude.
“Growing up in West and North Philly, I encountered many people who had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives and others who locked themselves into only a few options,” the 18-year-old freshman at the Rhode Island-situated Roger Williams University said. “I knew that if I could apply myself, I could see what I could become.”
The North Philly denizen learned of Work to Ride through Daymar Rosser, making polo the first sport from which he derived more than recreational enjoyment. Joining at 10, Rease came to view the Rossers as brothers, with Daymar, a senior at Valley Forge Military Academy, Kareem’s alma mater, being especially close to him. The team has received much press for being minorities succeeding in a sport that features few non-Caucasian Americans, but neither Rease nor Kareem Rosser has found his skin color an issue to ponder too laboriously.
“I’ve never found it rough being an African-American competitor,” the latter contributor said of representing Work to Ride. “If anything, it’s given me opportunities to talk about not being afraid of newness with family and friends. Polo’s been a great way to come to know myself better.”
In looking for more self-awareness, the two figures, who will gallop with sisters Shariah and Sheree Harris in serving as the more experienced riders for Hiner, have concluded polo has crafted social and cultural immersion opportunities that might not have come if they had taken up another sport or refrained from athletics entirely. Knowing the difficulty of devising a professional existence as a polo player, each is keeping his options open, with Rease, who tabbed himself the equivalent of a quarterback, happy to enjoy whatever moments he has, which makes Arizona an exciting location as it has born him and his colleagues contentment, and Rosser seeing the game as something to fall back up as he plots his future.
“I love the risk-taking aspect of it,” he said of polo, noting its adrenaline rush-granting qualities. “If I fear anything, it will affect my game, so I go out and leave everything I have on the field or in the arena.” Adding an air of invincibility comes over him when he competes, he knows upsetting the Cavaliers will be tough, but even if Work to Ride falls, he will deem the excursion a success because it will bring more publicity to his team’s love of polo.
“I’m that way, too,” Rease said. “I expect us to play well, but I know we will conduct ourselves like winners.”
131954531
131954551
