Dutta Corp made history Sunday at Grand Champions Polo Club. The fifth-year organization became the first team in the club’s 13-year history to win a tournament four years in a row. Defending champion Dutta Corp (Timmy Dutta, 2, Carlitos Gracida, 4, Kris Kampsen, 6, Jared Zenni, 6) defeated Aspen Valley (Pablo Pulido, 2, Juancito Bollini, 4, Grant Ganzi, 3, Alejandro Novillo Astrada, 8) with a thrilling 10-9 overtime victory to capture the Sun Cup.
“Let’s just call it the Dutta Cup,” joked Marc Ganzi during the awards presentation.
With less than four minutes left in sudden death, Kampsen’s 30-yard penalty conversion clinched the victory.
“No team has ever done this, ever,” Kampsen said. “It just speaks volumes about the organization the Duttas have put together. It also says how hard it is to win in this league and that’s only one tournament in the history of this club that has been won by a team four times.”
Jared Zenni, 23, a senior at University of Miami making his spring debut with Dutta Corp, was named Most Valuable Player. Zenni had three goals and played well defensively.
“It’s awesome what they did, it’s good to be a part of history,” said Zenni, 2018 U.S. Open and 2019 Westchester Cup champion.
In a rollercoaster game, the lead changed hands ten times and was tied six times. Aspen Valley’s biggest lead was 8-5 late in the fifth chukker when Pulido scooped up the ball after a broken play to score.
Dutta Corp came back in the sixth and tied the game on Gracida’s goal at 8-8 and went ahead 9-8 on Dutta’s goal at 2:11. Astrada tied the game at 9-9 at 1:16. Each team missed one final scoring opportunity before sending the game into overtime.
“I don’t know what happened today,” Zenni said. “We came into the game trying to play one way. Our goal was to try to hit wide open and run. Then we started playing and nothing was really going our way. I just think we were asleep. We woke up just in time. I feel we could have played much better as a team but overall we got it done.”
Aspen Valley had two free hits at 5:26 and 4:59 to start offensive drives before hitting the ball out of bounds. Kampsen then took over with a big hit downfield and Dutta Corp drew the foul to set up Kampsen’s heroics at the line.
“What was I thinking at the penalty line?” Kampsen said. “Don’t screw this up.”
Added Dutta, “When I see Kris go to the penalty line I am happy. I know when he gets to that 30 it’s 95 percent going to be a goal. The guy is a machine at 30s.”
Going into overtime, Kampsen, the veteran of the team, was confident in his young teammates.
“In overtime I made a game plan decision and the guys agreed with it,” Kampsen said. “I wanted to force Negro [Astrada] to release the ball with Jarod and Carlitos in the back and Timmy and I up in the front to try and really put some pressure on him. Luckily, we were able to turn those guys around a few times and we got the shot at goal that we needed.”
Dutta led Dutta Corp with four goals. Kampsen and Gracida each had two in addition to Zenni’s two goals. For Aspen Valley, Bollini had three goals, Ganzi and Astrada had two goals and Pulido added one goal. They had one goal on handicap.
“We come to win,” Dutta said. “I come every day to win, have fun and be very competitive. This game the rhythm was constantly changing, open-close, open-close but we got it done.”
Minotaur, a grey mare owned and played by Astrada, was selected ChukkerTV Best Playing Pony. Live stream viewers got the opportunity to vote for the game’s best playing pony.