Remy Du Celliee Muller is taking off his junior year at Lodi High School to play polo. Du Celliee Muller, 16, will travel to South Carolina in September and then Florida in January to train with one of the top polo players in the country. (Dan Evans/News-Sentinel)

Lodi High athlete skipping his junior year to play polo

Du Celliee Muller will train with one of top professional players in nation

Lodi High's Remy Du Celliee Muller is not your average 16-year-old.

While most kids his age are wearing Polo, Du Celliee Muller could be the picturesque figure emblazoned on millions of teenagers' collared shirts.

And if there was any doubt that Du Celliee Muller was enamored with the exclusive and widely unknown sport, he squashed those thoughts by deciding to skip his junior year at Lodi High to pursue his polo dreams on the East Coast.

"My dad realized it was a big chance for me, but I think my mom was a little nervous," Du Celliee Muller said after loading horses into his mom's trailer at their expansive ranch home in Lockeford last Monday afternoon. "I'm really excited."

He will spend the rest of summer practicing at his makeshift polo field in his backyard and with the Kentfield Pony Club in Lincoln twice a week. But, once September hits, he will make the cross-country trip to Aiken, S.C. and train under Julio Arrellano, who is one of the top professionals in the country.

Du Celliee Muller will take care of Arrellano's horses in exchange for room, board and expert training.

In December, he will come back to California for a month before traveling to West Palm Beach, Fla. to participate in the big spring polo season with Arrellano.

"I played with a pro in Southern California and he knew someone who wanted to house someone and take them under his wing," Du Celliee Muller said. "We first got the idea to do this around April and I decided to do it in May. It was a pretty tough decision."

About Polo

The Game

Polo is a team sport played on horseback and the objective is to score goals against an opposing team.

Protective helmet.

A player scores by driving a white wooden or plastic ball into the opposing team's goal using a long-handled mallet. The scorer must be mounted for a goal to be valid. Each team consists of four riders and their mounts.

The Playing Field

Knee pads

The field is 300 yards long and 160 yards wide (nine football fields). There are lightweight goalposts on each side of the field spread 8 yards apart.

Duration of Play

The game has four periods of play, also know as chukkas. Each period lasts seven-and-a-half minutes.

The Ponies

Polo mallet.

Between periods players switch to fresh ponies. Polo ponies are 14 to 16 hands high (one hand equals four inches) and weigh between 900 to 1,100 pounds.

Equipment

The basic dress of a player is a protective helmet, riding boots to just below the knees, knee pads, white trousers (often ordinary denim jeans), and a colored shirt bearing the number of the player's position.

The polo mallet has a rubber-wrapped grip and a webbed thong, called a thumb sling, for wrapping around the hand. The shaft is made of bamboo-cane with a hardwood head approximately 9 inches in length. The mallet head weighs from 160 grams to 240 grams, depending on player preference and the type of wood used.

Polo balls.

The outdoor polo ball is made of a high compact plastic, but was formerly made of either bamboo or willow root. The indoor polo ball is leather-covered and inflated and is about 4 inches in diameter. The outdoor ball is about 3 inches in diameter and weighs about four ounces.

Source: Wikipedia

Noel and Lynn, Du Celliee Muller's parents, have played a critical role in his upbringing around the sport. Their hidden gem of a property sits right off Highway 88 and has provided their son with all the necessities a polo player would need to grow.

Du Celliee Muller's father, a local veterinarian, got turned onto polo after meeting a client who played. Du Celliee Muller was 7 years old when his father started and by the age of 12 he was grabbing a mallet, jumping on his own horse and swinging away just footsteps outside of his home.

"They're really supportive of me and they've helped a lot," Du Celliee Muller said of his parents' involvement.

The hope is to one day make it as a professional and Du Celliee Muller knows that this opportunity is a giant leap in that direction.

"You can become a pro after some time, but you're not paid very well until you're very good," he said.

Professional polo players are ranked on a scale from -2 to 10. Du Celliee Muller is currently a 1 and feels that his time spent with Arrellano (who is an 8) will catapult him to double the ranking he could achieve back home on his own.

Even the most experienced polo player relies heavily on the pony he rides and Du Celliee Muller takes a tactical approach to using his equines.

"You want a big, strong and fast horse," he said. "I typically set up the quickest and best in the first period because people usually come out slow, so I wanted to take advantage of that. In the second and third periods I play my weakest horses and in the fourth I like to play my fastest runner and a good, solid horse."

Du Celliee Muller takes up to five horses to a tournament, which can be a daunting task in itself. He plays one for every four periods (each period is seven minutes long) and brings an extra pony in case anything happens to one of his four regulars.

On the field, Du Celliee Muller plays the striker position or the "Number One", which means he plays a key role in the offensive attack for his four-player team.

It was in that role that he helped his high school regional team from Northern California place second in a tournament last March in Santa Barbara. That finish earned the team a wild-card berth to the national tournament in Texas, but Du Celliee Muller's squad lost in the semifinals to the eventual champion.

"It was a game we could've won," he said of the finals matchup. "But at least we got to go to nationals."

In order to make up for all the lost time and credits for missing his junior year, Du Celliee Muller will have to take summer school again next year as well as carry seven classes each semester his senior year. He hopes it will pay off and land him at a college with a polo team.

There are eight schools in California with club polo teams, including USC and UC Davis. Du Celliee Muller knows it will be difficult to earn a scholarship based on polo alone, so he's hoping to be rewarded for his academics and use polo to boost his application.

"There's not very many scholarships for polo and it's pretty competitive for the ones that are there," he said.

While his sport of choice is not the norm among his peers, it's not for a lack of trying on either end.

"I think it's too different for them. It's hard to grasp," Du Celliee Muller said about most of his friends' attitudes toward the sport. "You have to be a very good rider to even start playing polo. It's similar to skating in hockey."