MAPLE PARK – Rusty trailers rumble out from main roads and settle in open patches of grass behind the Silver Spur Ranch.

Their drivers swing the doors open, call to their Rocks and Cashmeres and before long, it’s time for a chukker.

A select few folks flock to rural Kane County for practices with the Blackberry Polo Club, whose members take life by 7 1/2 minutes of heaven four days a week. The length of a chukker – or period – passes quickly, to be sure, but as club members add them up amid their 25th anniversary, it’s tougher to think time has passed so idly by.

“A lot of guys started with one horse back then and slowly added on and on, you know,” co-founding member Phyllis Fury says. “Then before you know it, you’ve got six.”

The group plans to gather at its headquarters on Bliss Road, one half-mile south of Main Street in Batavia, for a 25th anniversary benefit this weekend. The club’s seniors will hold a tournament featuring Blackberry members and other top midwestern players at the estate of George and Barb Alexander.

Cost is $10 per person or $30 per carload, with play beginning at 11 a.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. Proceeds will be split between Batavia Main Street’s Shakespeare on Clark and the Oswego Playhouse.

Barb Alexander acts in both companies – she recently took at turn in Oswego’s production of “Death On the Nile” – and is eager to advocate the arts whenever possible. Naturally, she’s a proponent of polo, too, and was only horsing around when talking about the Polo Training Foundation, the charity to which club members also traditionally donate.

“Training all these rotten kids to get better than we are,” Alexander smiled.

The club welcomes young players and the children of members for typically laid-back gatherings.

Practice chukkers are held here at Dean Regas’ Silver Spur Polo Club on Tuesday evenings, with the action shifting to Blackberry on Thursday evenings and Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Recent Glenbard West graduate Emily Meyer, 18, competes for a club closer to home but still is a regular at weeknight practices and well-known among the Blackberry brass. After beginning with dressage and other horse competitions 10 years ago, she picked up her first mallet last spring and now is a hopeful for the University of Kentucky’s club polo team.

This weekend’s tournament players hope for more like her. From George Alexander’s mount, the sport has taken its lumps since the baby boomer generation began devoting its discretionary time and money to a new hobby decades ago.

“A lot of it’s simple demographics,” Alexander said. “The population’s getting older, the participants are getting older and there aren’t that many kids coming along. And the last five years, the economy hasn’t helped us any, either.”

George Alexander, Arie Hoogendoorn, Bob Fury, Bill Read, Buzz Rackley and Steve Richardson each ponied up about $2,000 in the spring of 1985 to cultivate what now serves as the estate’s lower field.

Play began a year later as the club officially aligned with the United States Polo Association. Its 25th season of play opened June 4.

After the Senior Tournament, the Aug. 6-7 Women’s Tournament looms as the next big event. Blackberry members also hop in on Silver Spur’s tournaments, which run into September.

If the schedule sounds taxing, that’s because it can be, but at least the horses aren’t fazed.

“If they hear the horn, they know the chukker’s over,” Barb Alexander says. “They’re ready to stop right then.”

It’s a different story for the members. They’ll mark the next 25 years 7 1/2 minutes at a time.