Oak Brook Polo Club postpones 2024 season
Leaders of the Oak Brook Polo Club have decided to postpone its 2024 season.
Danny O’Leary, the club’s executive director, announced Wednesday that the 2024 season would be postponed until 2025 as the club undergoes “significant changes to our leadership and operations.”
Noting that “it’s a very expensive sport,” O’Leary told the Daily Herald on Thursday that the vast majority will be operational changes.
“It’s having the economics of it all work in alignment,” he said. “As part of these changes, we will be looking more toward the support of our fans, the polo community and residents of the village of Oak Brook.”
Oak Brook Village President Larry Herman hopes the 102-year-old club’s history continues.
“Being a lifelong resident of Oak Brook, I recognize the historical significance that polo represents to our community, and we will miss their crowd-pleasing matches this summer as they reconfigure their events to meet current needs,” Herman said in an email.
“I am hopeful that they can maximize this brief pause to come back in 2025 as an even stronger organization,” he said.
Under the heading of “2024 Sunday Season Schedule” on the club’s website, oakbrookpoloclub.com, an announcement by Oak Brook Polo Management said: “The postponement will allow us to focus on restructuring and improving various aspects of our organization, ensuring that when we return in 2025, we can offer (an) exceptional season of polo now and into the future.”
The statement says details about the restructuring will be announced “in the near future.”
O’Leary did not state a timeline.
‘We’ve been working diligently over these six months trying to execute a variety of different models to sustain what we’ve created over these last eight seasons (under current leadership), and that’s very, very hard to do,” O’Leary said.
The club’s 2023 Score online magazine listed 10 Sunday events last summer at Cecil Smith Field, 700 Oak Brook Road.
Club President James Drury stated in his forward to the 2023 magazine that attendance had quadrupled since in 2016.
The club was founded in 1922 by Paul Butler. From 1967-89, children Jorie Butler Kent and Michael Butler, who died in 2022 at 95 years old, both had terms managing the club.
Initially operating on land owned by Paul Butler, who founded Oak Brook as well as Butler National Golf Club, the polo club has leased land from the village since 1977 when Butler sold approximately 270 acres now used as the Oak Brook Sports Core multiuse facility.
At one point offering 13 polo fields, Oak Brook Polo Club had been using a field that had been converted into a public golf course driving range until several years ago when it renegotiated with Oak Brook and Butler National, Herman said.
In 2022, the polo club returned to the Butler National driving range, known as Cecil Smith Field.
The Oak Brook Polo Club hosted the U.S. Polo Championship 24 times overall, 22 times between 1954-78, Score magazine stated, and in 1986 entertained the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles.
“Oak Brook is an important club to the USPA (United States Polo Association) because of the position in Chicago and also because of a historical standpoint,” said Justin Powers, executive director of polo development for the USPA.
“We will continue to support our member clubs as they go through strategic planning, strategic changes, as this appears to be, and provide resources or help guide them as needed,” Powers said. “We’ve done this with other clubs across the country that have gone through ownership changes or leadership changes.”