How I Got Started in Circus: Part One

• I’m a first generation circus artist.
• I’ve been riding horses since before I could walk.
• I currently live in Las Vegas, NV.
• I attended Texas Christian University on a NCAA Women’s Equestrian scholarship.
• I grew up showing paint horses on the APHA circuit.
• I currently perform trick riding, cossack riding, roman riding and aerial arts.
• I currently train dressage and liberty.
• I started performing when I joined a local equestrian vaulting club.
• I went to college and then had a boring desk job for 3 years before I quit to pursue performing.
• I hated going to the gym before I discovered circus and vaulting.
• I’m an INTJ female (which means I’m an especially rare type of strange).

I was 21 when I discovered equestrian vaulting. It was my senior year of college. Due to coaching changes and personal challenges, it had been my worst year of equestrian team, and I was quite ready to graduate and move on, even though I didn’t have many ideas of what that would look like yet. What I did know was that I wasn’t going to leave horses behind. Horses have been my constant for my whole life. I grew up trail riding with my mom, and moved on to showing when I was 10 years old. My horse was pretty much all I cared about for all of my teenage years as well. When school threatened to hold me back for too many horse show-related absences, I homeschooled. I couldn’t care less about boys or parties or shopping, or whatever else teenage girls are supposed to spend their time obsessing over. So when my parents insisted I go to college and broke the news that they would have to sell my horse due to financial reasons, I applied for equestrian scholarships so I could keep riding.

When my four years of college were coming to an end, it was startling to realize I soon would be horseless.

Enter the Gold Star Pacesetters equestrian vaulting club.

It was our annual spring equestrian team meet at the Will Rogers equestrian center in Fort Worth. I wasn’t competing, but I had to be there anyway to help my team. I was standing by our stalls, waiting for showtime, probably bored and a bit annoyed that I wasn’t selected to compete.

In the warm up arena across the way, a roaned Percheron gelding cantered on a lunge circle. A girl younger than me stood at the center of the circle behind the lunger’s shoulder. At his word, she ran out to the cantering horse, matching his stride and swung effortlessly up onto his back. I remember thinking that was pretty cool. But when she stood up, moving only through her knees and ankles to keep balanced with the canter – that’s when it hit me. I wanted to do that. I wanted to stand on a cantering horse. I needed to do that… like an instinctual feeling that standing on a moving horse had always been an item on my bucket list that I didn’t know was there until just then.

When the vaulters and horse finished their rehearsal and came out of the arena to where I was watching, I took the opportunity to speak to their coach. He explained what vaulting was, and I told him I would love to try it myself. I expected he would just take my compliments and go on his way, but instead he gave me his phone number and told me to come to a practice. Just try it, he said. The first lesson is free.

Fast forward to two weeks later, which is the soonest I could make it to a vaulting practice with my busy college schedule.

It turns out that you don’t try vaulting tricks for the first time on the horse. There is a practice apparatus called a vaulting barrel, roughly shaped like a horse (emphasis on roughly) with handles that mimic the surcingle. The barrel came up to my chest, and the first challenge was to grab the handles and swing up onto the barrel. Turns out, my upper body strength? Total crap. Those workouts they made us attend four mornings per week for equestrian team? Yeah, they may have skimped on upper body. Horse riders don’t really need to do pull ups, do they?

My first practice consisted of learning some basic poses on the barrel and also on the horse, and then playing some strength building games with the rest of the team, which was mostly kids. Kids who were stronger than me. My crowning achievement was that I did stand up on the horse. It was at a walk, and only lasted for a handful of strides before I grabbed for the handles in panic, but I was still thrilled. By the time I left several hours later, exhausted and not ready to get back to homework and my night job, I was hooked.

I was also so physically worn out that I tried to lift my cell phone to my ear to call my mom on the way home, and I could barely hold my arm up. Ok, time to take going to the gym a little more seriously.

So that was my life for awhile. I graduated, went on a job search for a few months, got a job, worked, and the whole time, devoted as much time to vaulting and getting in shape that I could. We had performances with the team at local events, parades, and competitions. I loved it all. Before too long, the head coach asked me to step in as assistant coach to help run the kids practices and put on a separate class for parents and adults like me who wanted to try vaulting. The other young adult vaulters in the club became my best friends. I also tried some other new things at the encouragement of my new friends – aerial silks, trick riding, and tumbling. (cont. in Part 2)