By Haiden Widener, Campus Carrier Sports Editor
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| Bailey Albertson | CAMPUS CARRIER |
| Junior AnnaLee Cooley rides her horse at the Gunby Equine Center on Mountain Campus. With a long history in horse riding, Cooley has been a part of both Berry championship teams and hopes to be a part of a third this season. |
From shetland pony-pulled cart rides, to two equestrian national championships, horses have always been a part of junior AnnaLee Cooley’s life.
Originally from Thomasville, Ga. her dad is an equine vet.
Up until she was 16, she rode hunt seat, but her junior year of high school her dad convinced her to start riding reigning horses. She then bought a reigning horse and did shows in that category her junior and senior year. Her love of riding is what brought her to Berry. Though she had originally planned to go to a Division 1 school to ride, Berry’s scene sealed the deal.
“I could still be competitive here, but it’s a little bit more of a relaxed environment,” she said.
AnnaLee and the rest of the western team rotate between 15 Berry-owned horses. When competing at shows the riders draw random horses to ride in their events. To prepare for this, they constantly ride different horses.
“In order to be competitive in the intercollegiate showing, you really need to be good at riding any horse that you draw,” Cooley said.
Without horses at home, she has learned to build relationships with not only Berry horses, but any horse that she comes into contact with.
“To be successful in showing in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) you have to be able to develop that relationship between rider and horse instantaneously,” she said.
In order to build that relationship quickly, Cooley categorizes the horses by their personalities. When riding an anxious horse, she adapts her riding techniques to make the horse comfortable. The same principal holds if she is riding a lazy horse.
Cooley and the rest of the equestrian team compete in the IHSA. Her sophomore year she showed in advanced western horsemanship, in which riders are scored on their body movement and how well they can move their horse. It is described as a very slow and meticulous practice. But this year she is showing in open reigning, a faster-paced event more focused on the horse than the rider. This is completely changing her goals as a rider this season.
Growing up, competitions were all individual, so Cooley appreciates the team element of riding at Berry.
“What you do doesn’t just contribute to you and your success, but also to the team’s success,” she said.
Last season Cooley and the team won nationals, and if it wasn’t for her the team may not have even made it to that competition. Only the top three teams from each semifinal go on to the national competition.
Berry’s team tied for fourth place and was ruled out, but in a weird turn of events the third place team was disqualified, which left room for one of the fourth place teams. The tiebreaker: which team had more blue ribbons? Cooley won her class, a blue ribbon, at the semi-final show. This win bumped the team into the national competition, where they would ultimately bring home a national title.
In the speech she gave at nationals she said that the unusual set of circumstances pushed the team to ride harder and try harder because they knew that they didn’t really deserve to be at Nationals.
The team tied for first place with St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, N. C. The judges decided not to do a tiebreaker, so the teams are sharing the title.
“Our coach is actually really great friends with the St. Andrew’s head coach,” she said. “So just sharing the title is cool because we’re friends with them.”
Cooley said that she has grown more as a rider at Berry than at any other stage of her riding and she credits that to the coaching style of Margaret Knight, head coach and Debra Wright, assistant coach. Their coaching pays a lot of attention to detail that forces the riders to be better. There is a lot of pressure, but it is pressure that drives them to be better, which in turn creates growth. During her nationals speech, she made sure to volumize her gratitude to both.
She said about Knight, “you’re the IHSA master. You know the ins and outs better than anyone else out there. Berry’s long-term success in IHSA can doubtlessly be attributed to you.”
She went on with praises to Wright as well.
“I can honestly say that I’ve never been more challenged, equipped, or empowered than I have by you,” she said. “This is true not only in my riding but also extending into all other areas of my life.”
With all of the national riders back this season, Cooley said the standards are set really high since the team has won the national title back to back the last two years.
“We’re definitely going for a third [championship],” she said. “And I think it’s very attainable.”
The team’s Pack the House event is on Oct. 15 and will be held at the Gunby Equine Center on Mountain Campus.