ONE WEEK DOWN!

Team Lily Gallop!

Despite a bit of rain early on and a few wild horses, we have survived our first week in Aiken!  All of the horses have settled into a routine here, and they are very happy.  We have have been off the farm for a lesson, show or schooling every day this week, and the horses are ready for a well deserved day off!

As I had mentioned in the last post, our newest addition to the team, Wyn Maling, arrived to the farm with her horse on Wednesday.  She and Stellar have had extensive training level experience in Area 1, and she is planning to make it to a one-star this year!  I am very excited to have her as an addition to the team!

On Friday we packed up six horses on the trailer and made our way up to Gibbs' Cross Country Schooling site just south of Columbia, South Carolina.  I schooled Bucky there with Boyd earlier in the week, and I was so impressed with the venue that I brought the students and young horses up later that week.  We had a fantastic school at Gibbs', just lost track of time and were there well into the afternoon!  Each rider was able to focus on their weaknesses and iron out any kinks before our first event next Wednesday.  All the girls were riding well, horses were jumping great, and we are excited to get the season started!

Bettina Lesson Photo Gallery

I wrapped up the week with the privilege of having a few dressage lessons with Bettina Hoy.  Boyd Martin and Michael Pollard have made a plan to have Bettina here every month leading up to the Olympics to help many of the US riders with their dressage.  My first lesson felt a bit rough at times as I was acclimating to her terminology and teaching style, but I felt that my second lesson was great.  She rode Bucky for the first half hour, and then had me get on and helped me ride through some movements.  She was really tough on me about riding out to my hand rather than pulling him back, which is always an ongoing struggle for me.  She will be here at the end of February, and I am really looking forward to riding with her again.

We went to visit Charleston for our day off on Sunday!  Stay tuned for updates and the first events of the year, we'll be in touch shortly!

TEAM LILY WINTER TRAINING IS UNDERWAY IN AIKEN!

Bucky After His XC School!

We have been fortunate enough to make it out of Pennsylvania just before the first snow, and Team Lily has officially settled in Jennifer Berryman's Southern Cross Farm in Aiken.  We have ten horses with us this winter, and we have just welcomed a new working student to the farm!  Wyn Maling is coming to us from Massachusetts with her horse, Stellar, and plans to work with us for the next few months.

We have had an action packed first week here in Aiken!  The week started with a cross-country school for the students and young horses at Full Gallop Farm on Monday.  The horses are happy to be out of the indoor and are jumping great.  They will have another school later in the week, and should then be ready for their first show!

Tuesday brought a cross-country school for Bucky at Gibbs' farm in St. Matthews.  This is one of the best schooling venues in the entire country, so it was great to get Bucky out to work with Boyd there.  He helped me with my position as well as ironing out a few of the kinks I experienced cross-country last fall.  Bucky was jumping well and feels very excited to get the season started! 

Yesterday we packed up the trailer and made our way to The Sporting Days Combined Test for some dressage and show jumping practice!  This was a fantastic opportunity to practice  our dressage tests for the coming season as well as working on our show jumping.  Abigail Wilson, Annelise Aurillo and Andi Lawrence all rode in the combined test, and they were great!  A few hiccups were ironed out in the dressage, and the horses were jumping well. Each rider is looking ready to move up at the start of the season.

We will be wrapping up the week with a dressage clinic with Bettina Hoy, as well as another cross country school for the younger horses.  Stay tuned for updates!

Team Lily Has Arrived in Aiken!

More to come.........

Our Annual Gambler's Choice Jump Derby!

Hello Team Lily Followers!

I hope that you have all had a great holiday season and start to the 2012 year.  As many of you know, many of us will be headed south in just a few days for the kick-off of the 2012 season in Aiken, South Carolina.  We continued our winter tradition this past weekend with the Gamblers' Choice Jump Derby as a last fun gathering prior to the migration south. We had five groups of junior riders yesterday and despite the chilly temperatures, we had a great day! 

We started off the day with our most advanced riders, and Andi Lawrence rode to victory in her group with Annelise Aurillo on her heels in second.  Miranda Webb finished third with Expresso.

Our youngest riders Braden Speck and Lyndsey Barrett were next to ride in the 2' group, and they both rode spectacularly!  The scores were close with Lyndsey taking a narrow lead over Braden, but these riders were both champions in the spectators eyes as they have just started jumping in the fall!  They did a great job of formulating fast courses and rode the whole day thinking on their feet.

The third group to ride was the quickest and highest scoring group of the day with Nicole Spiropoulos, Kaelen Speck, Andi Lawrence on her second ride, Cassidy Heitzenreiter, Jenn Cain, and Sarah Hughes all in the saddle.  Kaelen Speck held the highest score of group on Weasel. These girls were all business in the ring, each riding the most precise and competitive courses of the day.  I can't wait to see what they accomplish on the event circuit in the spring!

Our fourth group to ride was a blast as well with some foxhunting ponies bringing out their best!  Lucie Hughes and newcomer Olivia Saber rode for the barn, while Ali Corkran and Meredith Mountain brought out some of the Cheshire Hunt's finest ponies!  These girls had a blast riding some tricky courses.  Meredith Mountain rode into the lead with one of the fastest ponies I have ever seen!

The final group to ride was Hannah Daneker, Claire McEntee, and Taylor Stenz.  These young girls rode aggressively and had a blast!  The scores were tight as each rider put in a leading round or two, but Hannah pulled out the leading score on Magic.

We all had a blast yesterday despite the chilly weather, and I'm looking forward to what these girls bring out for the competition season in 2012!  We will be on the road headed south by the end of the week, so stay tuned to the blog for updates and competition results!

As always, stay classy Team Lily

Congrats to the Tallmans on their Purchase of Doc Cowboy!

I am feeling mixed emotions today as I have just released one our best horses to his new home with Jill and Henry Tallman.  He will now reside on a private farm in Marshfield, Massachusetts where he will be trail riding, jumping and enjoying life with Jill. 

Cowboy has been with us for the past four years since his retirement from Jonathan Sheppards Racing Stable at the age of three.  He has been a stepping stone for so many of our riders, and his cute face and sweet disposition have left an imprint on all of our hearts.  Most recently he has been the mount for Sarah Hughes, and the two of them have had great success at the beginner novice and novice levels of eventing. 

Henry and Jill have been close family friends for many years, and Jill was a close mentor to me as a junior rider in Massachusetts.  She was at my side during my early eventing career with Ross, and we traveled to many of our competitions together.  Though it is tough to let a horse like Cowboy go, it gives me comfort to see him so happy in his new home with the Tallmans!  

Congratulations to Jill and Henry, we wish you many happy years with Cowboy!

2011 Season Wrap Up!

Hannah

Hello Team Lily followers, it has been a month since the last blog post, and so much has happened!   Since I last blogged following the CCI*** at Fair Hill International, Team Lily made the trek to Kentucky for the Mid-South Three Day, and attempted to join the competition at the Horse Park of New Jersey in the snow!  Abigail Wilson, Annelise Aurillo, and Julie Henk competed at Midsouth, while Andi Lawrence was the only rider able to ride at New Jersey before the weather deteriorated.  We also wrapped up the season with a few Starter Trials in November.
  
We departed for the Mid-South Three-Day just two days after the finish of Fair Hill International CCI***.  We were welcomed to the Blue Grass State by three days of cold, miserable rain, but fortunately the rain cleared out just in time for dressage to kick off on Friday!  Abigail Wilson was riding Fernhill Flag in the CCI*, while Annelise Aurillo and Julie Henk were riding Your Lucky Day and Regal Dancer (their respective mounts) in the Training Three-Day.  All the dressage tests were respectable, placing them well in their divisions to move up through the rest of the weekend.  

Braden

As Team Lily usually does, we posted an impressive three double-clear rounds on cross-country day!  The courses were long and tough, but the girls' training and fitness preparation paid off as they cruised around the courses without any difficulty.  Each rider moved up quite a bit in the standings and were sitting well going into show jumping on Sunday.

Sunday brought chilly temperatures but another great competition to wrap up the Mid-South Three-Day.  All three horses jogged up well in the morning and were ready for show-jumping.  The CCI* jumped first with a difficult course with many rails falling.  Abigail had a great ride and with two rails down she moved up to 13th place overall in a field of 50 starters, and an impressive 3rd place in the Young Riders division.  Annelise Aurillo had just one rail down to finish 10th in the Training Three-Day and Julie jumped clear to finish in 11th with Dancer.  The girls put in a great effort the entire weekend, and are looking very ready to move up in the spring!

Since I have been so busy with the fall three-days through the end of October, we spent the last two weekends of the fall season at the Maryland Starter Trials and the Full Moon Farm Starter Trials to get the younger kids and greener horses out and about before the end of the season.  Jenn Cain competed her young horse In Jest both weekends as well as Andi Finerosky on her new young horse Digger.  Both were very pleased with their horses and we were glad to get them going before the winter.  Kaelen Speck rode Rosenharley Romello to second place in the ON at Maryland, and Cassidy Heitzenrater finished in 9th on her dressage score in the BN.

The most enjoyable part of our last event at Full Moon Farm was coaching Braden Speck and Hannah Daneker to their first finishes at a horse trials!   These young stars have been working all year to get to this event, and I could not have been prouder watching them ride.  Braden finished 4th in his Elementary division, and Hannah finished 6th in a very difficult Baby Beginner Novice division.  As you might remember, Hannah rode to an almost-finish at Fair Hill in the summer, popping out of the tack at the second to last fence on the course.  Hannah suffered a broken arm later in the summer but that did not hold her back from powering on in her progress.  Hannah and Braden are just two of the many bright young stars Team Lily is bringing along!

We have just 58 days until the Aiken departure ( but who is counting )  . . .

Happy Holidays everyone!

Fair Hill Recap - Looking Forward to Lexington!

Look closely in the background and you will see many Team Lily supporters! 
Photo Credit: Gayle Hughes

We have just wrapped up a somewhat soggy yet successful weekend at the Fair Hill International CCI*** in Elkton, Maryland.  The weekend started off with fairly temperamental weather through the Jogs and Dressage days.  We would have brief periods of sunshine, followed by thunder, downpours and wind.  The cross-country course designed by Derek DiGrazia could not take much more water on the track, however it surprisingly dried up just in time for the 3* cross-country on Saturday.  We were lucky to have another sunny and cool day for the show-jumping on Sunday.  


I of course set out on the weekend to compete well and finish in the top ten, but the larger goal in my mind was to get my last qualification for Kentucky next spring.  I had a good run around the CCI*** at Jersey Fresh this past spring, but as many of you know I had too many rails in show-jumping for it to be a qualifying result.

The weekend started off fairly well for me and Bucky with the first jog and an early dressage test in the CCI*** division.  He jogged really well on Thursday, if anything just a bit too fresh.  He has come to understand the lead-up to these CCI competitions and he get very excited once the competition is underway!  He warmed up well for dressage, and as he had been schooling well so I had high expectations for the test.  Once we got into the arena, he was ready to perform and I unfortunately made a few mistakes!  I have never had him too engaged and balanced as I did in the ring, and I got too tight on him a few times which made our movements a bit less spectacular.  We scored a 54 which put us in the top 20 going into cross-country.  

The cross-country course was definitely the largest and toughest track I have walked around thus far in my career.  The footing was looking very wet, so there was much concern about how well the horses would run around the track and how quickly they would tire.  I was glad I had Bucky as fit as I did, as the two-star horses who rode before us were looking really fatigued by the end of the course.  


I had a foot-perfect round with the exception of one very costly fence at the Chesapeake water, the main water jump in the middle of the course.  We had a duck in the middle of the water four strides to a line of one-stride angled brushes down a hill.  I had ridden the combination exactly to plan, but I think I had more faith than I should have that Bucky would pick up on the second brush fence.  He ran down the hill past the second brush without ever seeing it.  I was able to come back around to the second brush and finish the rest of the cross-country well, but the 20 jump penalties there were costly on an otherwise perfect round.  I unfortunately needed a good reminder that Bucky and I are still green at this level, and though he is very honest to jumps I need to be harder on him about making sure he sees what he is jumping.  We sat in 23rd place following the cross-country going into Sunday's competition.  

I was really pleased once again with Bucky's performance in the show-jumping on Sunday.  He was feeling fresh but I'm sure he was masking a bit of fatigue from the Saturday's ten minute XC course.  He felt very nervous and tense going into the course, as he tends to when there is a lot of atmosphere surrounding the show-jumping arena. This usually bodes for a disastrous round where he rushes at the jumps.  He did feel a bit rushed in the arena but still maintained his shape over the fences to finish a great round with just one rail down.  He is definitely developing confidence at this level and is getting much more consistent in the way he jumps.  With that show-jumping round, we were able to finish the Fair Hill CCI*** in 20th place with a qualifying result for the Rolex CCI**** next spring!

Now that I have wrapped up my fall season on Bucky, I am looking very forward to the Midsouth Three-Day competition at the Kentucky Horse Park.  Abigail Wilson will be competing in her first CCI* with Fernhill Flag, while Annelise Aurillo and Your Lucky Day will be competing in the Training Three-Day as well as Julie Henk and Regal Dancer.  Though it looks like the weekend might start off rainy and cold, I am looking forward to coaching these girls though a very serious competition that they have been preparing for the whole year!  Stay tuned for updates on Mid-South.

I also want to say a BIG THANK-YOU to all of Team Lily who came out to support me this past weekend at Fair Hill!  Success feels even better when I have you all around to enjoy it with me.  I would not be at this level today without your support!