Park students participate in horseback riding outside of school

Used with permission from Mimi Kniser.

When sophomore Mimi Kniser rides her horse, she feels a connection with the horse beyond just working with them.

“They’re so cool. It’s loads of fun working with them,” Kniser said. “You’re helping your horse, and he’s helping you.”

You’re helping your horse, and he’s helping you.[/pullquote]According to junior Amelia Huebsch, she focuses on consistent rides with her horse and making clean jumps over the fences.

“I do an English style, which is people jumping over fences, called country jumper. We like our horses to (ride) with a lot of consistency. We don’t like their paces to change. We don’t want them to speed up or slow down,” Huebsch said.

If you could ride a horse anywhere, where would you ride?

• In a barn
• In a field
• In a competition
• On a beach

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Kniser said she trains often to work on her jumping skills to prepare for competitions in order to become an all-around better rider.

“I go to the barn four days a week, and I ride,” Kniser said. “Three of those days I do jumping lessons with my trainer, and one day I ride alone.”

According to Huebsch, she competes in the two tournament rounds of competitions with a more inexperienced horse as a challenge.

“I’m competing my horse in the pre-green, which means he’s a more untrained horse, so that’s a lower fence height,” Huebsch said. “I go around and jump the course once, and then they give me a score. If it’s over 85, I go to the second round, and they measure accuracy to score me out of 100.”

With so much time dedicated to riding, Huebsch said she has to strategize her academic workload to avoid affecting her training time.

“It’s important to be planning ahead and know what I need to do,” Huebsch said. “I try to get my work done in school. I get my work done during study hall or in class so I can have time after school to work with my horses.”

Kniser said she hopes to be able to continue to improve and have the opportunity to compete in college.

“My main goal with riding is to do well enough that I can continue to compete in college,” Kniser said. “I love seeing the progress.”