Kimo Huddleston was not born to be a polo player. Growing up in Maui, Hawaii, a friend of his father’s came to play polo there and left a couple of weeks later for Calgary Polo Club - with Kimo in tow. “He said to my dad, ‘Why don’t you send Kimo with me?’ So of course, my dad says yes - five kids in the house, one of us has gotta go.”

Kimo was 12 years old and that first summer was meant to be a one-off - it wasn’t. He found a benefactor who took him in and sent him a ticket to come up every June and help out. “I was the son he never had,” Kimo said. “His two sons were allergic to horses.”

Kimo moved to Calgary immediately after graduating from High School, but after two Canadian winters, he was ready for some sun. He went to the desert where he started to play and by the age of 25, he was six goals.

The Kimo Huddleston Cup is played annually in Calgary. It started in Kimo’s first year. “I wanted something to play in,” he said. “They put it on for the grooms, minus ones and zeros... There have been up to 30 teams in it with people coming from all over Canada and the States near the border.”

As a professional umpire, Kimo takes a psychological stance - studying each player’s personality. “We’re not there to take away emotion,” he said.”In any sport if you take out emotion, you might as well go watch paint dry. I have a line and my goal is for everyone to understand where that line is so that if I do give you a yellow, you deserved it - and you know it.”