We hope everyone is getting excited about the 2006 polo season here
at Potomac Polo. We trust that you found our 2006 newsletter
interesting. If you missed it, you can link to it by visiting our
home page at www.redeagleranch.com . As most of you who are into
polo know, the US Open is underway in Palm Beach and I thought I'd
share an interesting statistic with you. One of the points that
Mary constantly reinforces in the school is the importance of
practicing and completing your foul shots. Sure, most players if
not all want to scream down the field and make the long hit through
the goal, but the data consistently show that is not how games are
won. Consider the current US Open. The tournament is roughly 65%
complete. During this time all the teams have played at least a
couple of games. If we take the top scoring players from each game
for both the winning and losing teams we can see how many goals were
scored by opposing sides through completed penalty attempts and
field goals. As Mary will tell you in the school and drill into you
through practice in the classes, typically the team with the most
effective penalty conversions wins. In 14 matches to date at the US
Open, the top scoring players on the winning teams collected 52
penalty points and 47 field goals, while the losing teams' top
scoring players collected 35 penalty points and 40 field goals.
Think about it. The top players on the winning teams had many more
penalty conversions than the losers. You might also infer that the
committed less fouls. The big difference was their ability to make
penalty conversions. So the next time Mary has you run through your
penalty attempts, concentrate because you could just be your team's
hero or goat in the next tournament.