That vehicle has provided a fantastic journey for many Work to Ride alumni, including the ones featured in the Ralph Lauren men’s Work to Ride campaign, like brothers Kareem and Daymar Rosser, who have both gone on to win multiple championships and been featured on HBO’s Real Sports program, as well as Malachi Lyles, an aspiring young polo star with several All-Star nods under his belt, not to mention a modeling contract. We don’t groom them to be professional polo players. And that’s not going to be for everybody. Adding, “It’s gone from just trying to get them through high school to, at this point, really stressing moving onto college.
“We want them to get good grades we want to expose them to a wider world, provide them with as much opportunity as we can, and introduce them to as many new things, within our power, that we can,” she says. You have to put the time in.”ĭespite the national titles, the program’s aims are essentially the same as the very first year, when Hiner left her corporate 9-to-5 to launch Work to Ride. “But, as with any athlete, to be good at your craft, you have to practice.
“Some of the kids are just naturally athletic, which helps,” Hiner says. Polo, it turns out, is a great motivator. There are also opportunities to volunteer through the “Counselor in Training” initiative and summer employment once students are old enough. The other days of the week, when the children aren’t at school, they’re turning Work to Ride into a program that’s won a pair of National Interscholastic Championships. It provides a place for financially need-based youth from around Philadelphia to learn how to ride and to play polo, but it also teaches them responsibility: in order to stay in the program, the kids are tasked one day a week with keeping the stables in order (they get a stipend for doing so), but not only that-they have to keep their grades up as well (in addition, Work to Ride provides after-school tutoring and summer camp scholarships). The park is located between two of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, West and North Philadelphia, which means it’s a walkable distance for the approximately 60 boys and girls in the program that may not be able to afford other transportation options, Hiner says. That’s the way it has been for the past 25 years since Hiner founded the Work to Ride program in the stables within Philadelphia’s historic Fairmount Park. During the other six, the equestrian center is teeming with Philadelphian kids and young adults ages 7 through 19 playing polo, learning to ride, tending to horses, cleaning stables, studying, and generally hanging out.
It’s the one day a week Hiner is able to do paperwork and get things in order around the stables. On a quiet Monday in January, Lezlie Hiner is getting the frozen pipes fixed at Chamounix Equestrian Center.
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