By Alex Kurtz, Sports Editor
On campus, junior Vanessa Lloyd is known by fellow students as a music education major with an emphasis in piano performance and a member of Sigma Alpha Iota. There is one thing that many people overlook though: she is one of the best horse riders in the United States.
Lloyd competes in hunter-jumpers, which is a discipline in the English category and has done so since she was 12-years old. Her current horse, Dewey, has been with her for six years.
“At first, he hated to jump, but now he’s known as a push-button horse where he just automatically does his job,” Lloyd said.
The two have taken home multiple Grand Champion awards, including one at the Wellington Equestrian Festival, where she showed and competed with Dewey alongside Olympic riders. The festival is the longest-running equestrian competition in the world.
Lloyd has also been the number-one ranked rider in the state of Pa. and has even been ranked as high as first on the East Coast and second in the nation.
Despite these awards and notoriety in the scene, Lloyd did not start off as a local celebrity right away.
“In middle school, I was the weird horse girl,” Lloyd said.
Eventually though, her accomplishments started to show and by the time she was in high school in Mifflinburg, she was one of the best riders in the state.
“As I started getting better and everything, all my teachers started to know since it’s such a small school,” Lloyd said. Since the Wellington Equestrian Festival was in the winter, Lloyd would leave school for a few months to compete and would take online classes to make sure she did not fall behind.
“I remember her leaving to go compete and in school,” high school classmate and fellow Susquehanna student Dalton Bierly said. “I didn’t know much of the scale or specifics but I knew it was pretty important if she was allowed to leave for that long.”
Although riding and competition are serious, there have been times where things are on the lighter side. One example was a time where she was on a trail ride and ended up in the water.
“I got to go swimming with my horse once, so that was pretty interesting,” Lloyd said. “My trainer said to go in the water with Dewey and I thought ‘there is no way he’s going in.’ He was scared of the water at first but once he found out that he could splash he was a like a big ‘ol kid.”
The more surprising thing though was that she kept a very low profile about competition while in college and was not one to boast despite the gargantuan number of awards, even to her sisters in Sigma Alpha Iota.
“She posts about it on Instagram but for the most part, none of us knew how big this was,” Sigma Alpha Iota sister Steph Shirk said.
Lloyd plans to continue competition with Dewey and defend her state-champion crown and also plans to go back down to Florida to compete at the Wellington Equestrian Festival once again. She is keeping the thought of competing in the Olympics in mind as well.
