For Rowan Love, the best preparation for winning the 2024 MZ Farms/USHJA Emerging Athletes Program National Training Session has been her day job as a stable management fellow at Sweet Briar College (Virginia). In fact, the four-day intensive, which included educational sessions, riding clinics and competitive classes, felt like a “nice reprieve” from her usual role.

“I help take care of all the horses on the property, and I’m kind of like the assistant barn manager, too,” Love said. “I’ll help facilitate vet appointments, farrier appointments and everything. I help keep records of everything, because during the school year, we have up to 80 horses on the property, so it’s a pretty big operation.” 

For the EAP competition, Love narrowed her focus from 80 horses to one, randomly drawing a 14-year-old Oldenburg mare, Star Jewel. The 16 athletes who qualified for the national training session were judged based on their riding and horsemanship skills with an unfamiliar horse, along with their stable management practices and attention to detail, under the eye of lead riding clinician Joe Fargis and stable manager Colleen Reed. Love’s trainer of eight years, Alex Fredal, was unsurprised that her student stood out to the judges, who were Fargis, Reed and members of the EAP committee.

“Her horse care is and has always been exceptional,” Fredal said. “She’s a very quiet person by nature, so I think that horses tend to gravitate towards that because she moves slowly. She just has a good sense of reading a horse. She’s always been very dedicated to her level of horse care, regardless of it being her own horse or another horse.”

Love’s horse sense is a product of both natural ability and diligence in her formal education. She grew up in Northern Michigan riding on the hunter AQHA circuit, and she pursued an equine-focused higher education, graduating from the University of Findlay (Ohio) in 2021 with a bachelor of science in equestrian management and an associate’s degree in English riding and training. At Findlay, Love also rode in IHSA with Fredal, who was then the school’s coach. 

“Since she was a freshman in college, I think that her riding has developed and, for sure improved, and the type of horse that she can ride now is very different than the type of horse she could have ridden eight years ago,” Fredal said of the rider’s progress.  

This year marked Love’s second time participating in the national training session. She credited her participation in 2023 with teaching her new skills and inspiring her to get more comfortable with unfamiliar horse—skills she worked to hone before this year’s session.

Listen to Love in her own words, courtesy of USHJA:

When she’s not working at the barn, Love often spends her days off fussing over her own two horses, Ben, her retired childhood gelding, and Reno, a jumper who was assigned to her at Findlay and whom she bought after graduation. She wasn’t deterred by Reno’s quirky, often anxious, behavior. 

“He’s just a hard ride; he’s got some baggage that we always are continuously trying to work through,” Love said. “I love Reno to pieces, too, but he has definitely helped make me the rider and horse person that I am.”

In the riding portion of the EAP competition, Love had to adapt to a very different type of ride from her own gelding. Although “Jules,” Love’s assigned mare, is owned by Sweet Briar College, Love had not ridden her before the Nov. 7-10 competition. 

“I got on her for the first time during EAP, and she was just like a little hunter princess,” Love said. “She was just the most perfect little lady all week for me, and she was such a different ride from Reno, my quirky jumper.” 

For Love, getting to ride Jules at EAP under the guidance of Fargis felt like a dream. She put her typical show-day nerves aside to soak up the experience.  

“I had audited one of his clinics in the past, and it was very surreal being able to ride with someone that was a two-time Olympic gold medalist,” she said. “It was insane that I was able to do that.” 

On the final day of the competition, the riders divided into groups of four, mimicking Nations Cup teams, and tackled a jumper-style course. The committee and clinicians also asked Love and reserve champion Amaya Bellfield, 17, Longmont, Colorado, to participate in a ride-off on new horses after the Nations Cup-style competition to finalize their rankings, and Love took the win.

For Love, tending carefully to Jules throughout the competition was well within her own comfort zone. Following the competition, Fargis said that the top participants stood out for their attention to detail. Love says she couldn’t help but make sure Jules was immaculate, from her mane and tail to the state of her stall. 

“When it comes to the horses, I think I get kind of anal with how things are in the barn, especially in a horse show or competition setting, because I want things to look nice,” Love said. “I want to make a good impression on anyone who walks through.” 

On the final day of the EAP competition, when Love was announced as the winner, Fredal was thrilled to see her longtime student being celebrated not just for her good riding, but her good horsemanship. 

“She’s not a loud personality, [so] I do think sometimes she flies a little under the radar, because she just goes about her business, and she rides whatever she’s supposed to ride, whether that’s her own horse, or whether I asked her to ride something else,” Fredal said. “But she’s kind of so quiet and smooth that all of a sudden you look up, and you’re like, ‘Wow, that girl can really flat a horse well!’ ” 

The EAP win is a milestone for Love, who hopes to one day have her own boutique barn with a handful of training horses. The win also earned her an invitation to work with Reed and Nicki Shahinian-Simpson during the USHJA Gold Star Clinic in January. She’ll prepare as she always has, by getting to work. But now, in addition to Ben and Reno, Love has another stand-out horse among the 80 faces in the barn. 

“[Jules] is one of my favorites, now,” Love said. “I gave her a handful of peppermints the other day. She’s a good girl.”