Sarah Jarosinski Holy, DVM, DACVAA, is no stranger to test-taking. For 14 years after high school, Jarosinski Holy forged a rigorous path to meet her childhood goal of becoming a veterinarian. But when a devastating cancer diagnosis shocked her in October 2023, just days after her wedding, Jarosinski Holy turned to test-taking again, this time in the form of the USHJA Adult Horsemanship Quiz Challenge, to help distract her through the draining cancer treatments ahead. Those treatments led to her recent clean mammogram—and her hard work earned her a second-placed finish in the national horsemanship contest.

At first, Jarosinski Holy wondered if she would even be eligible for the HQC, thinking that being a veterinarian might be an unfair advantage. But when she downloaded the study packet, she realized that she was, in fact, a little rusty. Vet school and various internships and residencies over the past decade had limited her barn time, so she cracked open her study materials and got to work.

Jarosinski Holy started riding in second grade, after a friend at school told her about her own horseback riding. She marched right home and requested “pony lessons.” What started as a hobby quickly became all-consuming. Her parents were her biggest supporters, buying their daughter a pony when she was 9.

“It snowballed from there,” Jarosinski Holy said. When she was 11, they added a horse she showed to their small herd, and by the time she was in high school, sick of chauffeuring their daughter to the barn daily, her parents bought a farm near Richmond, Virginia. It was their daughter’s job to care for the horses, so every morning, she fed and cleaned stalls before catching the bus to school.

Jarosinski Holy attended Hollins University (Virginia), competing on the school’s IHSA team. During her freshman year, she walked into a meeting with her academic advisor toting a binder that detailed her planned path to veterinary school. Her advisor laughed and asked, “So what do you need me for?”

The binder must have worked: Jarosinski Holy eventually was accepted into all six vet programs to which she applied, and she chose to continue her education at Texas A&M. While there, despite a rigorous schedule, she found ways to “keep her butt in the saddle.” At the dressage barn where her roommate boarded her own horse, she’d hop on anything that was offered, whether it was the barn owner’s Prix St. Georges mount or a greenie in training. When that barn closed, she took a stab at polo, playing for several semesters on the Texas A&M team.

Once her post-graduate internships, and then a three-year residency in veterinary anesthesiology began, however, 100-hour work weeks replaced barn time. 

“[I] missed riding regularly, but I just kept telling myself to just keep grinding,” she said. “I was so close to having both the time and money to get back into horses in a real way.”

During her residency, Jarosinski Holy met the man she would marry, Josh Holy, a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy, and a naval science instructor at Texas A&M.

Holy was moving to San Diego, and Sarah joined him, having secured her first post-residency position as a veterinary anesthesiologist at Veterinary Specialty Hospital-North County in San Marcos, California.

Most pressing on Sarah’s list of tasks post-move was finding a place to ride. She started taking weekly lessons at DVG Show Stables in November 2022, and by the next spring she was looking for a lease. Her trainer came across a cute 5-year-old gelding named Torrey. He was for sale, and seeing his potential, Sarah decided to pursue a lease-to-own situation.

“It’s the most stressful thing, as a vet, to vet a horse,” she said. “He was only 5, coming 6, but something was slightly off, and I was uncomfortable. I wasn’t in a rush to get back into the show ring. He was a lovely young horse, and I wanted to give him some time.”

The pair rode lightly over the summer, and Sarah and her trainer played around with some medical treatments to see if he could be totally sound. They entered their first local show in August 2023 and went home with a handful of ribbons. She was excited about their future together.

But the same week, Sarah paid a visit to her primary care doctor. She had found a mass in her breast that was getting uncomfortable, but she didn’t think much of it beyond a possible cyst or clogged duct. She was only 33, and there was no history of breast cancer in her family. 

A mammogram and ultrasound followed, then she underwent a biopsy just days before she and Josh flew to the East Coast for their wedding. On Oct. 7, the pair married on the beach in Duck, North Carolina. Sarah asked her medical team not to contact her with the results of the biopsy while she was away. But the pathology report came through her online medical chart, and she decided to open the results surrounded by her family.

Three days after her wedding, Sarah learned she had breast cancer. In the airport lounge on their way back to California, she made calls to her nurse advocate, scheduled various appointments, and began to research her specific disease. 

“Those first days felt like being hit with a water hose [of information],” she said.

From the early days after her diagnosis, Sarah was focused on making something positive out of her illness. Entrenched in the medical field herself, she wanted other professionals to learn from what she was going through.

She enrolled in the I-SPY study, a clinical trial that looks to personalize treatment based on a patient’s tumor characteristics. Unfortunately, after two of four rounds of the recommended immunotherapy, Sarah’s tumor wasn’t shrinking, meaning she would have to undergo chemotherapy.

Right around the same time, Torrey’s six-month lease was up. A heartbroken Sarah told her trainer that she couldn’t go forward with the purchase. She’d been working a second job to pay for the horse’s training board, and she didn’t know how much she’d be able to work or ride in the months ahead. 

Sarah began 12 rounds of weekly chemo in January 2024. Recognizing that she “doesn’t sit still well” (she worked through chemo, and prides herself on not missing a single day of work), she also signed up for the HQC as a fun way to pass the time in the hospital, and when she needed to lay low at home.

“I’d realized that a lot had changed in the 10 years since I was riding really regularly,” she said. “And there were other things I needed to refresh, like the correct way to measure for a blanket.”

“And man,” she continued, “I needed a review on tack. I was sitting in the hospital thinking about horses in my past: Why did that one horse go in a Waterford, and what does that bit even do?”

She credits the HQC for giving her another goal to work toward after having to give up on purchasing Torrey. In her chemo chair, tubes hooked to the port in her chest, she’d pore over her HQC study materials, preparing for the first rounds of written tests she’d take in the fall.

At the end of her chemo, an MRI couldn’t detect any cancer on Sarah’s scans, but a biopsy confirmed a small percentage of living tumor still present. She either needed to undergo more chemotherapy or a complete right-side mastectomy followed by 25 rounds of radiation.

She chose the latter, more aggressive option, and in the four weeks between the last chemo and her April surgery, she felt good enough to ride. Her trainer had purchased Torrey and insisted Sarah come ride or visit the horse whenever she was able. That saddle time was vital; she knew she’d be required to rest following surgery and admitted, “I’m not good at that.”

In the meantime, Josh learned that the Navy would be relocating him to Virginia to serve as a combat systems officer on the USS Laboon. Both of their families were in Virginia, but the move was bittersweet since it meant Sarah would be saying goodbye to a fantastic medical team and barn friends that she cherished. 

In the short weeks in between Sarah’s last radiation appointment on July 19 and her move to Virginia on Aug. 1, her trainer suggested she show Torrey in the 3’ adult amateur division at a show at Del Mar Horsepark.

“I was terrified to do the 3’ because I’d hardly ridden,” she said, “but my trainer really thought I could do it. So I did. And you couldn’t have wiped that smile off my face all weekend.”

This past fall, barely settled into their new home, Sarah ended up back in the hospital, needing surgery to address an infection caused by the tissue expander that had been placed in her chest during her mastectomy. 

“A silver lining was that I got to watch the entirety of the Maclay finals online,” she said, “and I had a lot of time to study for HQC Nationals.”

Sarah spent 12 days in the hospital, then roughly a week later sat for the Adult HQC national written exam. She had an hour to answer 100 questions, and she welcomed the challenge.

“I can’t turn off my Type A personality,” she said, laughing. “This was meant to be fun, but I had nerves that were similar to when I was taking my boards!”

The interview portion of the HQC followed, where over Zoom, Sarah spoke with two judges. The top four competitors would move on to the practicum, and her 27/30 score put her in fourth place.

For the practicum, qualifiers were given a set of six skills that they needed to demonstrate and submit in video form. Sarah hadn’t yet found a barn in their new community, so she made the several-hour drive to her parent’s farm—her childhood home—to film her submission.

Her first pony, Tyko, now 29 and still living with her parents, was her model. Josh filmed his wife demonstrating the correct way to wrap a hoof, one of the skills she needed to complete. The weekend was special, Sarah said: She spent time with her horses and her family and even made it to her niece’s first birthday party.

To prepare for the practicum, she’d put herself in the evaluator’s shoes—a tactic she’d perfected studying for her anesthesia board exam—and attempted to think like the graders. What were they looking for? What would they want her to demonstrate? Her efforts paid off, and she scored highest in that element of the competition.

Each part of the HQC is weighted slightly differently, and when the final results came out in early December, Sarah learned that she had come in second place overall.

“I felt over the moon,” she said.

Sarah had her right breast reconstructed last month, and she’s doing her best to rest and heal.

 “My mom came to stay for a week to make sure I didn’t go back to house projects,” she said.

She is continuing her cancer care at Duke University Medical Center, and her most recent mammogram was clean. To enable doctors to continue learning from her case, she enrolled in another multi-center study in the area. She’s doing some veterinary consulting work as well, which she says is enabling her to connect with many different people in her field while being able to create a flexible schedule. 

Her diagnosis annoys and angers her, and she struggles with coming to terms with what it means for her long-term health. But she’s learning, she said, to jump on opportunities when they arise, and not wait for what might seem like a more opportune time. She’s started looking for places to ride when she’s cleared to do so, and she’s started putting money aside for when she crosses paths with the right horse in the future.