Search for the Mauna Kea Polo Club today and you will land on a website that admits, in its own words, that it is obsolete. The site still has the old schedule, the old logo, the old contact information. But near the top of the page sits a note telling visitors this is a "past outdoor club" kept online mostly for the players who used to run it, and that anyone looking for current information should go elsewhere. That is not a broken link. That is a club telling you, plainly, that it closed.

What replaced it did not simply rename itself and carry on. The Waiki'i Polo Club is a distinct organization, one that joined the U.S. Polo Association fresh in April 2022, under new management, with a new delegate and a new club manager running the calendar. The field is the same 2,000-plus-acre pasture on Waiki'i Ranch that has hosted mallets and ponies since the original club's founding in 1984. The Sundays are the same. But if you are a longtime resident who remembers writing checks to the Mauna Kea Polo Club, you are, technically, dealing with a different institution now, and the distinction matters more than it sounds.

What Actually Ended

The club's own FAQ addresses the confusion directly, because enough people have asked. The short answer, in their words, is that the prior management retired, and while many of the same players reorganized under the new banner, the current club considers itself entirely new, with entirely new management. That is a meaningful line to draw. It means the informal understandings longtime residents may have had with the old club, whatever the seating arrangement, whatever the handshake deal on parking, do not automatically carry over. The people answering emails now are Michelle Mazzetti, who manages the club, and Stephanie Keily, who serves as its USPA delegate. If you have a question about this season, they are who you ask, not whoever ran things a decade ago.

A Field Whose Teams Read Like a Map of the Coast

What makes this particular reorganization interesting is not just the paperwork. It is who showed up to play under the new structure. The club fields teams sponsored by names that will be familiar to anyone who spends time on the Kohala Coast rather than up at Waiki'i's elevation. One roster plays under the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel banner. Another rides for Lava Lava Beach Club. A third, 3J's Plumbing, mixes local trade with local talent. These are not sponsorship logos slapped on a jersey for a tax write-off. They are working rosters, with named players attached to named horses, playing on a field well uphill and inland from the resorts whose names they carry.

That detail says something about how this stretch of the island actually functions that a listing description never will. The ranch and the resort corridor are often described as separate worlds, cool upcountry pasture versus warm oceanfront lawn, paniolo heritage versus golf-course polish. On Sunday afternoons in polo season, they are the same crowd. A guest at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel can drive up and watch staff and regulars from their own hotel compete against a team sponsored by a beach club down on the coast. The field does not care which zip code you came from.

The Rhythm of a Sunday

The season itself runs on a schedule the club states plainly: every Sunday, starting at the beginning of October and continuing through the end of December. That puts the 2026 season opening in the first week of October and closing out in the final Sunday before Christmas, a rhythm the club has kept consistent since its 2022 relaunch.

The field sits at 67-1026 Palekaiko Road in Kamuela, inside the ranch's gates, and getting in does not require a membership. Admission works on a simple tier structure:

• Single admission: $10 per person, paid at the gate
• Vehicle flat rate: $20 per car, which works out cheaper for anyone carpooling with three or more people
• Season Social membership: $75, covering one vehicle's admission for every Sunday match of the season

Seating is first come, first served, in and around the Polo Pavilion, and the club explicitly invites spectators to bring their own picnic blanket or lawn chairs rather than expect fixed seating. General parking sits in the pasture behind the pavilion. Members who upgrade to VIP status get reserved field-side parking instead, along with permission to bring a canopy tent for shade, a detail that matters more than it sounds once you have sat through a December afternoon above 3,000 feet with the trade winds picking up.

One structural detail worth knowing before you plan a Sunday around it: the USPA lists Waiki'i as a single-field club with no horses available on-site. Every pony on that field arrived in a trailer, owned or leased by the player riding it. There is no rental string, no beginner mount waiting in a stall. What you are watching is players who brought their own horses up the mountain for the afternoon, which is a different proposition than a resort exhibition match staged for tourists.

The Rule Even Longtime Residents Get Wrong

The most common surprise for first-time attendees, and even some returning ones, is the dog policy. The club does not allow dogs at the Polo Pavilion, full stop, and the FAQ is almost apologetic about it. But the reason is not the club's own preference. It is a condition of the Waiki'i Ranch Homeowners' Association, which owns the field and the pavilion and sets the rules for anyone using them. The polo club is, in effect, a tenant on HOA land, and the no-dogs rule reflects the HOA's terms rather than any decision the club made independently. If you have brought a dog to a match on the ranch before under the old management and gotten away with it, that leniency did not survive the transition. Leave the leash at home.

Beyond the Field

Part of what the reorganized club has built into its identity is a stated commitment to giving back to local youth through fundraising and outreach, and the structure backs that up. The USPA lists Waiki'i as an active interscholastic club, meaning it supports a youth team distinct from its adult roster, and the club sells youth playing memberships specifically aimed at introducing younger riders to the sport. That is a small but real signal that the club sees itself as a long-term fixture on the ranch rather than a seasonal novelty for spectators.

For a community defined as much by its cattle herds and eucalyptus groves as by its polo field, that continuity matters. Waiki'i Ranch has always described itself around its agricultural easements and community herd as much as its recreational amenities. A polo club that trains the next generation of local riders fits that self-image more naturally than one built purely around Sunday spectacle.

What This Means If You're Watching From the Sidelines

None of this changes how a Sunday actually feels once you are standing at the rail. The mallets still crack. The divots still need stomping at halftime, a tradition the club leans into rather than apologizes for. What changes is what you tell a friend who asks whether the old Mauna Kea Polo Club is still running matches. It is not. What plays on that field now is a newer, differently managed club that happens to draw its rosters from the same resort names you already know, which may be the more interesting fact for anyone trying to understand how this upcountry community and the coast below it actually stay connected.

If you already call Waiki'i Ranch home, none of this requires you to do anything except show up with a chair, cash for the gate, and no dog. If you are weighing whether this stretch of pasture on Mauna Kea's western slope is where you want your next property, Doreen Trudeau can walk you through what ownership here actually looks like, season by season, ritual by ritual. Work with Doreen. Request a private consult.