Portage equestrian Alicia Hall is not your average eighth grader. She’s won local and regional competitions in the Pony Hunter and Pony Jumper categories, and just last year she placed in the top ten at the National Pony Finals in Lexington, Kentucky. Hall, the owner of five horses, competes with each horse in a different category.Hall rides Luigi, a Hackney, in jumper events. Jumper events are competitions with a set course of jumps and obstacles to overcome. Each rider and horse is judged on their ability as a team to cleanly jump over all the obstacles in the course within a period of time. Hall competes with her horse, Honey, in hunter jumper events. Hunter events are similar to Jumper events in that they require clearing a set of obstacles over a period of time but differ in the obstacles used.
“More natural obstacles like logs are used on hunter courses”, Hall said. “Each horse is good for a certain event because of certain characteristics. We practice with each horse to improve their skills in that specific event.”
Hall said that she doesn’t quite know exactly what breed of horse Luigi is, but she describes him as a Hackney that, “didn’t make the cut”, she said. Regardless, the results show that Hall and Luigi have proven to be a winning combination. Last weekend, Hall went to Anchorage for the Zone 12 Annual Horse of the Year awards banquet to receive the championship title for having the most points in the child-adult amateur category.
Hall has been riding horses since she was two, and has owned a horse since she was four. Her first experience with competition was in 2003 when she entered her horse “Calamari” into an equitation competition in Fairbanks and took home a best of show award. The following year Hall and her father Henry Tomingas, found Connemara mare “My Shiny Penny”, in Canada and “brought her home to Alaska and have taken the circuit by storm”, Tomingas said. That year, Hall and her pony Penny competed in nine separate competitions and took home at least one championship award from every competition. Many in the equestrian world considered Penny to be the “epitome of a perfect Connemara, and that was before she won any competitions”, Tomingas said.
Hall’s favorite thing to do with her horses is to go out riding bareback with her friends on her father’s farm in Portage.
“You can’t really ride out here right now with the snow and all, but during the summer time, we’ll go out and set up some small two foot jumps with my dad,” she said. “Then we’ll run over and get the horses and just jump on them with no saddle or anything. We hang on to the mane and go around taking turns jumping the obstacles. It’s a lot of fun.”
With sights set on the future, Hall and Tomingas are actively searching for another horse to begin working with the intent to train for a spot on the junior National riders team.
“ As you can see, I still have a few years to go,” Hall chuckled.
The minimum age for junior team riders is 17. In August 2007, Hall plans to compete for her third try at the national title at the Pony Finals in Lexington, Kentucky.
Hall will also be included on public television as young riders share their stories in “The Saddle Club Video Journals.” The series began airing in Dec. 2006.
“It’s good knowing that I made it, I accomplished my goals,” Hall said. “I made it to the top with my pony.”
For more information on Alicia’s achievements and links to Alaskan equestrian activities, visit her website at www.myshinypenny.org.