Sunset "Sunny" Hale (December 30, 1968,
Carmel, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea (), often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and ric ...
– February 26, 2017,
Norman, Oklahoma
Norman () is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, with a population of 128,097 as of 2021. It is the largest city and the county seat of Cleveland County, Oklahoma, Cleveland County, and the second-largest city in the Oklahoma C ...
) was a professional
polo
Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...
player and one of the few women to play on pro teams consisting almost entirely of men.
In 2000, she was on the winning team in the
U.S. Open Polo Championship, becoming the first woman to do so.
[ At the time of the 2000 championship, she outranked 96 percent of players in the world, including men.]
Sue Sally Hale
competed as a polo player in the 1950s and '60s disguised as a man and is credited with breaking the gender barrier in the sport.
Sunny Hale was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is located in Fort Worth, Texas, US. Established in 1975, it is dedicated to honoring women of the American West who have displayed extraordinary courage and pioneering fortitude. The museum is an edu ...
in 2012.
Death
Sunny Hale died at age 48 from complications from breast cancer on February 26, 2017.
References
1968 births
2017 deaths
American polo players
Sportspeople from Ventura County, California
Deaths from breast cancer
Deaths from cancer in Oklahoma
Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductees
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