A recent, anonymous donation of $2.4 million to Houghton’s Equestrian Center will allow for the expansion of new facilities, and greatly impact the community. Both students and faculty are excited about this “huge step” for the Equestrian Center and highly anticipate how it will help continue to grow the program.
Larissa Ries (Strappello), Instructor of Equestrian Studies and Equestrian Facility Manager, is looking forward to the many opportunities this new expansion will bring to the community. “The new arena will allow us to offer more events for the Equine community, such as clinics, shows, etc., providing more learning opportunities for our students. It will allow us to host events for organizations such as Pony Club and 4H. We have been approached by these organizations about using the facility, but have struggled to have the time and space with all of the programming we have going on for the college students,” she said. “Hosting more events will allow our college students to have more real life experience of planning and running equine events.”
Ries (Strappello) also commented on how the arena will directly impact the Equestrian students. “The arena will also give our students who board their horse here more time to ride. Currently, in the winter months they are limited to riding when classes or community lessons are not going on,” she said. “It will provide more year-round use space for our students to practice and hone their riding skills as well as provide more year-round space for the local equestrian community to get involved in our clinics and shows.”
Macy Baumgarten ’19, an Equestrian Performance major, anticipates taking advantage of the benefits that come along with having a new arena. “With the new arena we will have another indoor space and will have more opportunities to ride, which means that we have more opportunities to further our education as Equestrian majors and minors,” she said. “I think I am most looking forward to the fact that we will have more space. It is always so hard to find ride time in the winter because we only currently have one indoor arena.”
Not only will this expansion bring more opportunities for students and community members to ride, but it will also provide more space for classroom learning. “I am also looking forward to having a larger classroom, that will allow our lecture classes to have more space, space that does not have multiple uses,” Ries (Strappello) said. “Our current classroom is also the lunch room, tack room, cleaning room and hang-out space (because it is the only room besides the tack rooms and restrooms that is heated).”
Jordan Smith ’20, a double major in Business Management and Equestrian Management, is counting on the new expansion to capture the attention of those in, around, and beyond Houghton. “This expansion is definitely bringing more attention to the Houghton Equestrian program, so it is nice for people outside of Houghton to be able to see what our program is all about,” she said. “With this expansion we will be able to have bigger shows which will attract other equestrians to our school and program, which is always exciting.”
The Equestrian Program is thriving, and it will continue even more so with these new developments. “Each year we get more and more Equestrian students because of the amazing program we have. I think that because we are growing it is important for our facilities to grow as well,” Baumgarten concluded. “With another barn, we will finally have more room to expand and grow as an Equestrian Program.”