Balancing academics with athletics is never easy, particularly when you have to worry about riding hard. But senior Tom Banks, a physics major, has managed to maintain a 3.95 grade point average while playing polo for Cornell's star team.
Banks came to Cornell not expecting to become a student athlete. He played high school basketball in his hometown of Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, but stopped at his senior year. "I had pretty much given up any thought of playing competitive athletics again. Then, serendipitously, I came upon polo and managed to work my way into varsity. It's a big thrill," he said.
Cornell's polo program is unusual among college sports because it exists largely to teach students how to play. "Few people grow up playing polo, so it doesn't have the same mindset as, say, football or basketball," Banks said.
Yet Cornell has one of the best teams in the eastern region, with both the men's and women's varsity teams frequently reaching the final round of the nationals. The men's team last won the national title in 1992.
The Cornell program maintains about 30 ponies for the 10-member teams -- a first-year team and a varsity team for men and women -- with each member paying $650 a year. The balance of program expenses comes from endowments, fund-raising and some aid directly from Cornell.
Banks joined the first-year instructional team in the fall of his sophomore year after taking a riding course with the physical education department the previous semester. He has played on the varsity team for the past two years in the "number one" position.
Of a team's three players on the field, number one is the most offensive position, comparable to a striker in soccer. The player is "all over the field and always looking for a pass to go for the goal," Banks said.
Banks hopes to take up polo again one day. "I'm going to be a poor grad student for a while, so it's going to be hard. But like everyone who plays polo, you get it in your blood and it's hard to get out. I'm sure I'll take it up again at some point," he said.
He will continue studying physics next year as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. "I'm still undecided about what I want to do with physics. For the next couple of years, I plan to take classes and see what interests me," he said.
Polo is less of a time commitment than most sports, with two three-hour practices each week, but the season lasts nearly the entire year, with games from October to April. Banks explained: "Once we get the horses in shape, we have to keep them in shape." He added, "It's the greatest game in the world. There are times when you would almost pinch yourself. I just couldn't believe I was a part of the whole program."
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