Close your eyes and shout

In honor of coaches who change everything

Meko and little Holly, toward the end of our career

She didn’t take kids—that’s what I heard. I’m sure my mom said a lot of other things about her accomplishments and her accolades, but the thing I fixated on was the idea that she already didn’t want to be coaching me.

“Then why are we going?” I asked.

“I begged her to give you a shot,” Mom said. “I told her you’re not like other kids.”

I thought about that. I wasn’t like other kids, as far as I could tell, in that I had a very evil pony who, despite trying to dump me off his back at every opportunity, still hadn’t managed to kill me. I was made of tough stuff, so I’d been told, which did manage to light a small flicker of pride in me, even though I knew that I didn’t have a choice. There was not an alternate pony, no extra money for an upgrade. And even if there was, I knew that toughness was a highly valued trait in my household and I, second born child, eldest daughter, was not going to be the one to quit.

We pulled up the circular driveway to a fancy barn with a covered arena—Stone Ridge, I think it was called. We had been there before for little horse shows and clinics (where I had been dumped and dumped again.) It embarrassed me to remember, embarrassed me to pull our ancient, plum-colored suburban and decrepit horse trailer alongside the spotless luxury SUVs that were parked out front, but I reminded myself that this was nothing compared to the embarrassment I was about to face at the hands of an exacting, child-adverse horse trainer.

Despite my pony’s nefarious ways, I loved him. I took meticulous care of him and, as such, spent a lot of time talking with him, brushing him, thinking about him. He was a reddish-chestnut with a long white blaze down the center of his face and a flaxen mane and tail that was as stiff as a broom. He came with his name, Meko, and I perceived him to be highly intelligent. There were many good things about him—I thought he was beautiful, he did lead changes automatically and easily, and was a pretty good mover. Despite the fact that he refused to go over most jumps 95% of the time, I still thought of him as my friend. Often, once I was on the ground, he’d trot over and sniff me gently. Sorry, he seemed to say, and I’d forgive him almost immediately.

We’d tried trainer after trainer, clinic after clinic, but it always ended with me in the dirt. Some had refused to work with us, others had continued to take our money and offer no solutions. It was not looking good.

And yet, when I walked into the covered arena (already a potential trigger for Meko’s naughtiness, with the strange light and the echoing sound) I was hopeful. Despite Meko’s bad behavior, I understood that I was a good rider—I worked hard on my flat work (often in order to avoid jumping for as long as possible). I was strong and balanced and brave—skills that were hard-won from riding such an unpredictable pony. But being a good rider didn’t mean anything if I couldn’t stay on my horse.

When I first saw Susan, my impression was of great stillness. I know it’s a strange thing to say—she was literally walking toward me when I made this observation—but she seemed to glide, and held herself very still as she did so. When she got close enough, she said hello, her smile limited to a softening of her eyes and nothing more. She was tall and slim, with thick, wavy blonde hair that was pulled back into a heavy ponytail and almost always wore a visor. I thought she looked a lot like Steffie Graf, and I felt like she was looking right through me, all the way to my innermost self. She seemed old to me—older than my mother, with her quiet confidence, but now I think she was probably only 30 at the most, maybe even younger.

She sent me to the rail with quietly spoken, highly detailed instructions and watched me ride without a word. At the end of the lesson (there were no jumps set up in the arena, so we couldn’t even try, thank the gods), Susan said that she’d accept me as a student. I’d be the youngest person she’d ever worked with, but she agreed with my mother: I wasn’t like other kids.

I’m not sure if that was true, but one thing quickly became clear to me: Susan wasn’t like other trainers. She had nothing to prove. She accepted only a few students at a time and was quiet, observant, and perpetually unflustered. She was extremely technical—a dressage rider herself—and spent a lot of time teaching me things most pony riders didn’t worry about, like how to bend my pony in the corners, to get him in a frame, to counter-canter and do tempi changes. Once, and only once, I caught a glimpse of her riding in the very early morning at a horse show. She was warming up an older student’s horse in a distant ring. My mom spotted her first and beckoned me over to watch. She rode just as she walked, as she spoke. Quietly, fluidly. She was inseparable from the horse, tall and elegant in the saddle, and seemed to sit in perfect stillness. Beneath her, the horse was supple and obedient, moving in complex circles and spirals.

Despite her knowledge and her calm determination, Susan couldn’t stop Meko from refusing the jumps either, and she watched me get dumped again, and again, and again. We tried everything. We rested poles half on the jump and half on the ground, a crude kind of funnel to lure Meko up and over. She tried walking behind us as we approached the jump with a crop in her hand, waving it wildly and shouting, “Get!”. She even resorted to picking up clumps of dirt from the ground and throwing them at his haunches in the moment before we were supposed to leave the ground. None of it worked.

One day, just another day after school, with the sun starting to set behind the trees that edged the riding ring, we were attempting to go over a box jump in the lower corner of the ring and failing. I was thirteen years old, and I think Susan could see that I was losing my will. I felt, for the first time, defeated. I had been battling with Meko since I was ten and was starting to lose my connection with him. Apathy was setting in.

Susan asked me to stop, then walked up very close to me and put her hand on Meko’s rein. There was a fierceness in her face I’d never seen before. “It stops today,” she said to me. “I want you to close your eyes when you’re two strides out, and I want you to shout as loud as you can.”

I looked at her blankly.

“He doesn’t believe you,” she said. “He doesn’t think you can do it.”

I started to cry. She looked up and into my face—her gaze was unrelenting. She normally gave me space when I was upset, but not this time.

“I want you to tell yourself—I want you to tell him—that you are going over this jump no matter what. There is no other choice. Do you understand?”

I nodded, wiped my tears, and turned away to begin the long, looping arc needed for the approach. I thought about what it would feel like to crash to the ground with my eyes closed, how I wouldn’t be able to protect myself from the sharp edge of the flower box, the perpendicular ridge of the standard foot.

“Stop it,” Susan called sternly to my back, seeming to read my spiraling mind. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t know you could.”

Her words were like a spell on me. She’s known all along that I can do this, I thought. It’s me who thinks I can’t. Something unlocked, deep in my mind, and I suddenly got very, very angry. We walked to the end of the ring and picked up the canter. When I turned the corner, Susan looked at my face and shouted, “Yes!”

We cantered closer and closer. With each stride, I grew angrier and angrier. I felt all other emotion leave me. I was no longer afraid, or worried. I sat deep in the saddle, and dug my heels into his sides. Three strides out, I closed my eyes and began to bellow. We left the ground, together.