Ummm…sorry @CHT It did take a turn, but…an interesting one?
This post went “off course”. Lol
Good luck!
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I’m on the younger end of Gen X and grew up in the far western exurbs of Washington, DC. I can vaguely remember my brother playing community rec league soccer when we were elementary school aged. My father even coached it for a few seasons.
The population here has been wonderfully diverse for as long as I can consciously remember. And now 30 years later, students from parts of the world where football is king – India and South/SE Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean – comprise a majority at several of the high schools in the eastern half of the county. Including my daughter’s school and the one at which I long-term subbed. No question that the kids have definitely branched out into the traditionally American HS sports – a lot of Sikh guys play American football and wrestled, for example. But Holy Crud Monkeys the soccer teams at these high schools are forking unreal. You’d be forgiven for mistaking them for a development squad for Arsenal or similar rather than a bunch of high school kids. If you didn’t start at age 4 and consistently rank among the top 1% of a travel league every season since you had basically no chance of making even the Freshman or JV squad.
The school I taught at was new and lay across attendance zones in such a way that they were able to recruit the best athletes in the county. One class I watched a quiet, lanky sophomore who was already almost 7’ tall at age 16 lope around everyone else and dunk the basketball like 20 times in a row. As we all filed out, he thanked me for subbing class and held open the door for me. His outstretched arm was like 2’ over my head. Another day, a teacher asked if I could sit with her senior business class for a few minutes so she could run down to the office. Soon after she left, the door opened and one of the biggest human beings I’ve ever seen in real life ambled in and handed me his late pass. He was already committed to D1 teams for both football and basketball. Moments later, some good-natured ribbing erupted when another kid – a big, burly Pakistani-American varsity football player – shushed his friend because he couldn’t hear the Cricket championship on his cell phone over his conversation.
I loved that school and those kids! 
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One of my small cross cultural surprises was finding out the local Sikh community are huge supporters of our hockey team. Down to big block parties and dancing around the main street of the satellite city that’s heavily IndoCanadian after playoff games. Apparently field hockey was a big thing in British India. But ice hockey is just so Canadian core identity, like American baseball.
When you realize sports really can be a wonderful thing to draw people together.
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Hey, I’ll accept the term “old biddie”! I’ve been around long enough not to worry about such things.
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Well they must be very unhappy people. At least their horses are cared for.
I’m seeing the opposite, those who don’t pay to ride don’t get to ride. Riders available but not allowed.
I’m seeing limits on free leases and offering a ride to a friend in order for the owner to get a more experienced rider on the horse, in lieu of a paid training ride.
So this…
…would be a no.
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It honestly blows my mind a little bit that you’re in the Canadian prairies and cannot find a reasonably priced schoolie… I am in SK and although it took a lot of looking I found a dream horse last September for 10K out of MB. I’m an adult beginner (pretending to one day ride some dressage) and there were a few that came up but they were too small because I’m 5’10" (long legs) and need something in the 16 hand range otherwise my legs dangle terribly low.
Have you shopped SK/MB? There were a couple potentially nice lesson horses at auction a month or so ago that my coach was considering that went for around 5K. The AB/BC market is a bit less forgiving but perhaps you will find something suitable if you can get out to SK/MB (or are willing to buy based on video).
Edit: Just saw further down you aren’t able to travel and this could be hypothetical, depending on your health later this year … Do you have friends in other locations that could possibly go look for you if you got the itch to invest in a new schoolie or two?
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I’m in Mb - easy to find older safe tolerant w/t lesson horses and advanced jumping a course and doing a dressage test with a decent rider types, very hard to find that intermediate horse who can take a joke repeatedly and is athletic/sound/trained enough to do w/t/c, jump a small course and introduce lateral work
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Have you considered Arabians? They wouldn’t be my first choice, but my trainer has them, and holy cow are they adaptable, hardy and kind. And around here, the US SW, reasonably priced.
Just a thought, as your market may be different, but might not.
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Interesting. When and where were you a kid?
When I was a kid we played soccer along with softball but our coach called it Speedball. And in one of the books I read about the same age it was called Kickball, unlike at my school where Kickball was played with bases like softball or baseball.
Canada suburbs in the 1960s and 70s. There was about zero organized sports other than school teams for girls and boys basketball and boys football. You could go up the levels skating at the Winter Club. There were ballet lessons in a community hall run by a former dancer. Some boys managed to find hockey but more in areas that got outdoor rinks and frozen ponds in winter.
When I was living in the city in the Italian district in the early 1980s we were taken by surprise at the huge celebrations when Italy won the world cup.
Adults did not hike or exercise. Kids played outside all the time.
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Sounds kinda like my suburb in the 1950s-'60s Atlanta.
A few adults played tennis and golf. I don’t remember any who ran or played other sports. Even the occasional church softball games usually involved only male teenagers IIRC.
At school boys played football and baseball. Girls were cheerleaders for football. My high school had football, baseball, and tennis that were played against other schools. The big private boarding-and-day school that bought the lesson barn where I rode never had an equestrian team IIRC. Kids I knew who had horses rode them in Pony Club shows (all hunters back then, not eventing). The only sport I remember schoolkids being driven to was riding lessons.
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