I’ve been riding horses since I was five and there have only been a few years of my life where I wasn’t fully immersed in a riding program. When I came to OVS, I expected the riding program to be just as it was at my old barn, Springdown, but it wasn’t at all. I can barely remember the Lower Campus’ program, but when I came to Upper and I was incredibly pleased.

It was 2006 when I joined the Upper Campus’ riding program, and since then I can safely say that I’ve ridden almost every horse, jumped every fence, and gone on every trail offered.

I’ve received the Sandy Belleu Award and been never placed lower than a third in a show, and never less than first on my horse, Onyx. The riding program is one of the very few things that kept me at this school, but lately things have been changing for the worse.

Some riders ride up to three horses a day. Personally, I’d rather focus on one and have an extra to hack on long days, but people manage to ride three in up to two and a half hour period, usually even less time than that. They spend their free seventh period down at the barn and stay until the riding instructors literally have to ask them to leave.

One student went in and spoke to the headmaster about lengthening the riding period. However no good came out of that. The barn instructor and manager were simply angered and said that they have things to do at four thirty and could not be held up here, waiting on the students.

However there is another side to this. There are students like myself who go down early, ride our horse(s), do we what we are supposed to and leave at four-thirty. Now because people have been complaining, we aren’t allowed to leave until four forty-five. I don’t think that’s exactly fair.

If people want to stay until five, it’s their decision, but that shouldnt affect the people who have been here all four years and simply do our work and leave. It affects mostly day students as well who do in fact have a life and home in which they’d like to participate in. If there’s a problem with timing, should have been settled within the riding program, not the administration.

The school has also interfered with one other aspect of the riding program; our ability to partake in the two trails that this campus offers, if you can even call one of them a trail. Riding in an arena is tiring, repetitive, and boring for both the rider and horse.

Most moderately advanced students go on a trail once or twice a week, not including the cool-out walk to the gate or the back way to the gate. The back-way to the gate is personally one of my favorite trails. It takes you along the road, behind the amphitheater, onto the dirt road between the upper and lower fields, and back onto the main road. Due to soccer season, we are no longer allowed to go back there because the headmaster fears that it is dangerous.

Is it too much to ask for a player to hold his ball for ten seconds for a group of horses to walk past? I don’t think so. Is it too much to ask the basketball players to stop slamming into the fence as we walk by? Just yesterday I rode past the basketball couts and my horse nearly dumped me because he was so scared. I don’t think we’re asking for much.

Thoughout the last few years, the horseback riding program has been withering away. It’s sad. The program interests many and brings in tons of revenue for the school. Why let it go to waste?