First Person: Helping to Make a Championship Team Shine
If you walk about 15 minutes down the Avenue of the Elms, where the Saddlemire Trail and Oliver D. Appleton Golf Course meet, you will find the Elsa Gunnison Appleton Riding Hall.
When you're on a riding team of national caliber, you spend a lot of time on the back of a horse. However, there is also lots of time spent with two feet on the ground, taking care of our beautiful barn.
The select Saturdays that fall before Sunday horse shows in our home barn are some of my favorite days of the year. Double-header weekends call for a divide and conquer strategy. To prepare for a busy day of competition filled with riding, calculating points, and making sure our horses look their best, delegating jobs makes the work go by fast. Some teammates will load onto the bus headed to Geneseo with our beloved driver Bill. There, they’ll secure the win while competing against the nine other teams in our region. The teammates staying at home in Canton have an equally important job of getting our facilities and hairier teammates ready for the next day’s competition.
At about 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, the prep crew rolls in through the double doors of the barn ready to work for the next several hours. On our way in, it's hard to avoid the glimmering glass trophy case to the left, full of silver trophies, tricolor ribbons, and team photos celebrating success. The goal of the weekend is always to add more ribbons to this shimmering display.
To some other teams, the list of chores posted on the door of the locker room may be daunting, but not for the well-oiled machine of St. Lawrence riding. Some of the tasks include shining the wood walls of the 50-foot barn aisle with lemon- scented Pledge, organizing heavy winter blankets that keep horses warm, meticulously buffing mirrors along the walls of the indoor ring, and many more carefully thought-out chores.
With ease and efficiency, we all get to work on our “unassigned assigned” tasks. My favorite place to conquer is the St. Lawrence tack room, which houses all the horses’ equipment. Carefully, I brush the cobwebs away from the corners, dust the runaway ring footing from our equipment and floor, and give the glowing amber wood a once over with Pledge. Never did I think the lemony smell of wood cleaner could mean so much to me.
While most clean, some teammates take to the saddle in order to prepare the horses for the next day’s competition. Throughout the day, the ring will be split into three sections—one for spectators, another for riding, and a third for teams in preparation to mount their horses. Though we're on a tight schedule, we take some time to ride our horses enough to boost their confidence in the augmented ring.
Motivation throughout the day comes from updates on the road about our teammates winning classes and accumulating points. Second to winning a horse show, one of the most rewarding feelings in the world is admiring the sparkle of the barn after a day of preparation. When our teammates arrive home, they “ooo” and “ahh” at the hallowed halls we all love so much.
