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West Windsor-Plainsboro Today
Horsing Around is This Family's Business
Equine excellence
By: Phyllis Spiegel, Special Writer
Princeton University riders are making some news
Their majors run the gamut from psychology to engineering, their home towns from San Diego to Maplewood, but these Princeton University students share a love of horses and riding that gets them up and out of their dorms early every Friday morning to carpool to Cranbury.
There, every week at Silver Dollar Stables — under the tutelage of their coach, Ashton Phillips, a past Intercollegiate national reserve champion — members of the Princeton Equestrian Team brush up on their riding skills, learn new techniques, groom and feed the horses, and prepare for the Intercollegiate horse shows in which the team has been excelling in recent competitions.
West Windsor & Plainsboro News • Box 580, West Windsor, NJ 08550 • Phone: 609-243-9119
Phyllis Spiegel 12.MAY.06
Anne Stevens, of the Penns Neck area of West Windsor, is living proof of an old adage: “The family that plays together, stays together,” says Anne, whose family plunged into the stable business last June. “If you want a strong family, find something everyone loves, and do it together.”
Anne, her husband Mike, and their two daughters all agree that their family bond has been growing stronger since they opened the family business, the Silver Dollar Stables on Petty Road, just over the Plainsboro border in Cranbury.
While television, elaborate meals, and shopping trips have fallen by the wayside, they’re spending days, evenings and weekends together — all busy, involved and committed to a common goal.
The entire family is involved in the new business venture, which they named after a collection of coins, started by Mike’s father, from all over the world that depict horses.
Anne had a childhood interest in riding that had a hiatus of 18 years while college, marriage, and raising her family took primary importance. Now she’s living her dream, and she’s not only happier, but healthier. “The work has taken off 30 pounds,” says Anne, “and I feel more fit than in years, even though it’s a dawn-to-dark job to run this place.” The weight loss secret: “mucking stalls, throwing bedding, walking the property, and riding.”
Those who know her best see that she is radiant with the fulfillment. “Mom is more active and happier,” says her older daughter, Kaitlyn, 14.
Kaitlyn and Kelsey, 12, are at the stables after school every day. “We do our homework here,” says Kaitlyn, a freshman at High School North, and member of the Robotics Team.
While many of their classmates spend leisure hours at the mall or are involved in seasonal sports teams, Kaitlyn and Kelsey are happy to focus on riding as their sport. “It’s a bonus that our parents are at every show rooting for us,” Kaitlyn says.
They have their own horses that they care for, and both are responsible for preparing the grain and feeding all the Silver Dollar horses. Though it’s not easy work, Kelsey says, “we don’t miss what the other kids in school are doing. We know we’re going to spend our lives with horses, whether it be as a vet or a trainer or in some other role,”
Kelsey, a Community Middle School sixth grader, continues, “We like that we have something to do every day. We don’t sit around and watch TV. We get more exercise and feel healthier.”
The girls frequently bring their friends to Silver Dollar, creating a social atmosphere. Anne calls the new venture “The Anti-Boy Drug.”
She explains that there are teenage boys taking lessons and riding at the stables, but as far as her daughters and their friends go, “Young ladies who get interested in horses would rather be with the horses than hang out at the mall.”
Anne says her girls have “blossomed” and that having responsibilities at the stables has “exploded their confidence level.”
No one minds that dinner may be late most evenings and that if a horse is ill, and Anne has to stay late, they have to rely on take-out from a variety of area restaurants that are programmed into their cell phones.
Kaitlyn and Kelsey belong to the Cream Ridge chapter of the US Pony Club, which educates members about riding, equestrian matters and careers in the field.
Says Kelsey, who is part of a team that will be in a national competition in Lexington, Virginia in July: “We’re getting to know our parents better here because we’re spending so much time together. When we ride the tractor with Dad, he shares memories of his boyhood when he rode the tractor with his grandfather. And when we all rode near a creek on the property, Mom told us about a creek on her grandparents’ farm in Indiana where she used to ride as a child.”
The property was run as Canterbury Tails for about seven years by the DiPano family, who sold it in 2004 to Reddy Bathena of Millstone, an entrepreneur. Bathena maintains ownership of the property but has leased it to the Stevens family for six years.
The stables on the property are notable for having been uniquely designed to eliminate one of the major negatives involved in caring for horses: the smell. While Anne claims, “I’ve been addicted to the smell of horses since childhood,” her daughters don’t share her passion for this aspect of the family business. According to MarketBusters, a 2005 book by West Windsor resident and Columbia Business School professor Rita Gunther McGrath, most stables “were constructed with ventilation flowing up and down a center aisle, meaning that when any inhabitant urinated, the air in the whole stable was perfumed. To eliminate this negative [the DiPanos] built a facility with cross-ventilating windows in the stalls.”
The almost 20-acre site also includes an 80 by 190-foot indoor riding arena with stands that accommodate some 75 spectators. There are 17 stalls in the attached barn and two large outdoor riding rings. The Princeton University equestrian team uses the facility for practice and training.
Operating with a philosophy of good horsemanship and safe riding, Anne Stevens said that a lot of stables just want the “look and the show. While we agree that it’s good to look good, if a rider isn’t ready, we’ll work and teach until they’re ready for competition.”
Expansion is on the horizon. Anne has hired new instructors and will be running riding clinics with outside experts. Cindi Duffy of West Windsor is available for “Pony Parties” either on site or at a child’s home, and she is planning a summer camp for children from five and up where they will learn to ride and be involved in horse-related crafts and other activities.
Anne and Mike came to West Windsor from Indiana 13 years ago for his job with Bristol-Myers Squibb after he had earned a PhD in pharmacology at Purdue. Anne originally vetoed the relocation after the company picked them up at Newark Airport and drove them past the oil refineries and down Route 1.
“Two years later, they tried again,” she said, “this time driving us from Philadelphia Airport through Bucks County, the nurseries and horse farms, with a stay at the Nassau Inn, and we were sold.”
While she had worked as a hospital radiologist in Indiana, once in New Jersey she concentrated on raising her family and later was heavily involved in PTA and other school activities.
Because a friend of the girls was taking riding lessons, Anne took the girls for lessons when they were seven and five. The “riding gene” must have kicked in, she said, because “they immediately fell in love with horses, the atmosphere, and the whole mystique.”
“We eventually bought horses for the girls and boarded them at a nearby stable,” Anne said, “and six years ago, because the girls knew I’d always loved riding, they got Mike to give me a gift certificate for lessons. That’s when, after 18 years, I got totally hooked again,” she says. And with that the Stevens family has found in Silver Dollar a way to make their passion be their business.
12/12/2006
Staff photo by Frank Wojciechowski
At Silver Dollar Stables in Cranbury, coach Aston Phillips works closely with the Princeton University Equestrian Team, which has been excelling in regional competitions.
Katie McGee, 18, grew up in Houston, two minutes from the Houston Polo Club. She was 7 when she started to ride and was at the club three to four times a week.
"But it was very different," said this freshman Literature and English major. "I played polo, riding Western style, much faster, and outdoors. Here, we ride indoors in the barn and I'm just learning to jump."
Jo Lanus, a junior and Art History major, had her own horse at home in Louisville and has been riding since early childhood.
"But at home, I rode Saddle Seat. Now I'm becoming a more versatile rider," she said.
Kelly McCormick, a sophomore from Rye, N.Y., has been riding in Long Island's Hamptons since childhood and has competed regularly in the Hampton Classic in Bridgehampton, a major competition. In addition to the workouts at the stables, Ms. McCormick said she still runs or swims every few days.
Junior and Psychology major Shayla Mulvey rode her first horse at the age of 4. Until she was 10, she said, she rode hunters at home in San Diego and then did dressage. She said she was "rusty" because she didn't ride during the high school years and now enjoys being part of a team.
"It's a nice break to get off campus and do something different," she said.
According to team manager, Allison Harding, the size of the team practically doubled this year, bringing the total up to 33 members.
"We have riders from every experience level and from every imaginable background. We have people who have never ridden before to those who showed extremely competitively in the years before coming to Princeton. Some come from backgrounds in dressage, polo, jumpers, Saddle Seat and Western," she said.
"As a team, we teach and show Hunter Equitation, meaning there is a flat phase where we are judged on our style as a rider without jumping, then a jumping phase where we are again judged on style and technique, but this time, over fences."
Ms. Harding has been on Cloud 9 since October when she had her horse, Yogi, shipped from St. Louis to Silver Dollar Stables. A junior, majoring in English and American Studies, she said her family sold the horse when she left for college but then bought him back.
"We are happy to be together," she said. "I missed him. It's nice to find a piece of home right here with my buddy," she said affectionately, stroking the horse. "Yogi is of Dutch ancestry," she said, "sired by Argus, a famous Grand Prix jumper."
Lindsay Jacob, 20, a Comparative Literature major, said that horses were a "huge" part of her life growing up in New Hope. She's had her own horse since she was 14. She rushed out of the stables one recent Friday to get back to campus to give a presentation in Spanish class — still in boots and riding clothes.
One of the three men on this year's team is Jon Yehuda, 20, of Roslyn, Long Island.
A junior majoring in History, Mr. Yehuda said that horses go with history. He rode for a couple of years in his childhood but has been away from it since he was 12. He believes that riding improves concentration, awareness and thinking. And he's pleased that because of the rating system in shows, beginners have the same chance to score.
Teasing Jon, stable owner Anne Stevens noted that "he knew where to find the pretty girls."
Two New Jersey members are Laura Valle, a sophomore, 19, who grew up riding in Maplewood, and Lucy Guarnera, 19, also from Essex County, who rode only when visiting an aunt who worked at the Cornell University Equestrian Center. Said Ms. Valle: "It cheers me up to get out here early in the morning."
Competitions are held five times a semester and involve 12 schools in the region, including Bucknell, Rutgers, Lehigh, Lafayette, Moravian and others.
In addition to riding, the group does a number of fundraising events, such as working at football, basketball and lacrosse games or selling pizza on campus late at night. A group of the members volunteers at a therapeutic riding center, working with the handicapped.
Membership in the Equestrian Team is more than a once-a-week activity to these riding devotees. They meet for dinners, parties and even travel as a group. Said Ms Harding, "Last year at spring break we rode together down the west coast of Ireland and even participated in a St. Patrick's Day parade there."
Mr. Phillips, coach for the last two years, has brought them from scoring low competitively to placing first in the entire region last year.
While riding is a club sport at Princeton, many of the competing schools have full blown equestrian programs with their own horses and barns, Ms. Harding explained.
"Even several of the other Ivy League schools are varsity," she added, "but at the All-Ivy Championship at Cornell last year, we tied Dartmouth, which is a big time varsity team, for second place."
"These young people are all in great shape," Ms. Stevens said. "They need endurance to stay on a horse; they must be strong through the shoulders and maintain a strong core."
"People don't know how much effort this is and how much strength it builds," said one team member. "Other students often tease us about how easy it is to just sit on a horse, but they don't realize how it uses practically every muscle in the body."
©PACKETONLINE News Classifieds Entertainment Business - Princeton and Central New Jersey 2006
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