OLDFIELDS SCHOOL RIDING SPOTLIGHT

By Director of Riding Amy Phillips

Bryce McNichol ’23 is a four-year senior who has been riding since she was a little girl. She grew up watching her grandfather and mother ride and compete cutting horses and began riding and showing at a local barn, Country Hill Farm.

While at Oldfields, Bryce developed an interest in horse care and helping horses recover from injuries. On three occasions, the McNichol family has graciously taken in Oldfields horses to live at their nearby farm for rest and recovery, which allows the horses to recover in a setting that is quiet and restorative.

The horses remain under Bryce’s care as she receives daily instructions from Oldfields’ barn faculty, and in conjunction with the staff, she designs and implements a schedule for each horse to bring them slowly back into work. The horses which return to the Oldfields program from the McNichol farm are happy, healed, and ready to enter back into our lesson program.

Bryce has participated in everything the Oldfields Riding Program has to offer, including ANRC, hunters, jumpers, equitation, dressage, eventing, foxhunting, and cross country riding. This year, Bryce is leasing Oldfields’ Changzhu to pursue her goals in the equitation ring.

She is the only Oldfields rider to be a member of both our IEA Hunt Seat Team and our IEA Dressage Team. She was elected by her dressage teammates to be Captain of this new team. She qualified individually for Regionals in both Hunt Seat and Dressage, and she was a factor in both teams qualifying for IEA Regionals this year.

Bryce has also learned a lot about ground work through her experiences in our Equine Winter and May Programs. She has a natural feel for what she needs to do to get the best out of the horses. She embraces and seeks to learn more about how horses learn and how she can apply all of this to her time in the barn and in the saddle each day.

Bryce is passionate about horse care and horses, and she spends any free time she has at the barn, including summers and school breaks. She is eager to help, to learn, and to do everything she can to become a better horse person.

As Bryce looks towards next year, she has many opportunities to pursue her love of horses with acceptances to five different colleges with riding programs and degrees in Equine Science as well as many more equine majors. We couldn’t be more proud that Bryce will soon be an Oldfields alumna representing us in the equine world!