 Hey, I'm Kenley West with Alabama 4-H State Ambassador and I'm here with Emmie Christie who works at the University of Alabama. She's the University's Alabama coach and trainer and today she's going to be answering a few questions I have for her at her work field at the University. So, Emmie, how did you get in contact with this job? I just sort of happened to be in the right place at the right time. The person that was the director of the program at the time when I started was in contact with my trainer at the time and they were looking for someone to help take care of the horses and he called me and asked if I was interested and put me in contact with the director at the time. What clubs and activities did you do growing up that made you want to put your future into this career? 4-H. AQHA which is the American Quarter Horse Association and that was the big thing. I went and watched lots of meets and stuff growing up so I just fell in love with it. What's a day like as the equestrian coach? That all depends on what time we start lessons so it depends like if we're starting lessons at 7 a.m. I have to be here at least by 6 to make sure horses are up and fed before we start. I have to assign horses to each student, make a game plan of what we're going to do depending on who's coming for lessons that day and who is going to be riding what horse and then I will go and we'll do the lesson, we'll practice, do all the things that we're supposed to do and then after the lesson I will go back into my notebook and take notes on that student so I know what we need to work on for the next lesson and then just taking care of the horses and helping wherever needed throughout the day as well. Okay, how long have you been working for the university? Three years, I'm going into my fourth year with the university. And what is your most favorite part of your job by working with the university? Lots of things. Most of it is just getting to teach and help other students because not only do I teach college kids, we have the therapeutic division that I get to help with with the smaller kids. Could you go into more detail about the therapeutic? Yeah, so the university has this therapeutic program where we help, we give lessons to kids in different programs within the university most of the time. So there's Rise, which is a small-aged group of kids that have disabilities, so we have some kids with downs that come out and we teach lessons and we have kids with autism and all kinds of different groups and ages. Most of our Rise kids are six to three and then we have Brewer's porch, which is a program within the university for kids and most of those kids are between the ages of 11 to 15 that we teach lessons with. What advice would you give any youth who is looking to be interested in your field? If you don't have a work ethic and don't like working and sweating, then this isn't the place to go. Make as many connections within the horse world as you can because you never know who is going to help you out in the future. And always do your best and put your best foot forward because you never know who's watching and who you make an impression on. So when you're looking for new riders on the team, what are some like details that you look for? Most of the time when we have tryouts is when we pick new members for the team. Work ethic, willing to try. You don't have to be the best to be on the team, but if you're willing to try and you listen, that is the biggest thing because we have kids that try out that have never been on a team, never really ridden a horse in May because they've won it so bad and they put in the effort at the tryouts. They get a spot on the team over the kids that don't have the want of the riding. What is the schedule of a university student on the team like? What's their schedule like? Class comes first for sure. So when they join the team, they get like a schedule for meets and then they give me their class schedule so that I can set up practices around their classes. And they have two practices a week plus whatever days we have to travel for shows. Most of the time we do, you have to block out about a three hour block for practice about 20 minutes to drive out to the barn, 20 minutes to get your horse ready, an hour lesson and then 20 minutes to untack, 20, 30 minutes to drive back to campus. They have a bunch of different responsibilities within the team. We do workouts and depending on like what the team as a whole decides to do practice workouts have been at 6am or 8pm. So it's just sort of that is left up to them on when they decide to do it but it is required once a week. Okay. On a show day, what are the different type of classes that y'all offer? The Western team does horsemanship and then we have open level riders that do the reigning. The hunt seat team does flat classes and jumping classes for classes. They have three groups of jumping like open, intermediate and novice. So there's three different levels for that. Can you explain to us more about what IHSA is? IHSA is an intercollegiate horse show association for college students. You have to be a full-time college student and you have to be in academic good standings and you ride with the school that you go to. So you can't go to Alabama and choose to ride with the Mississippi State team. So you have to show with the team you go to school for. What's the difference between IHSA and NCEA? IHSA has a wider level of availability for students to ride. So we have all the way from walk trot to open. They go to shows and you draw a horse out of a hat and you watch this horse warm up and you get on this horse and you adjust your stirrups. Make sure you are ready to go and you go in immediately and show that horse into the best that you can. So IHSA is an intercollegiate horse show association for college students to ride with the NCEA. Each team is open level so it's just one class of horsemanship and one class of reigning. It's Auburn and Baylor. The Auburn student will ride us and the Baylor student will ride us at two different times. They also get a four minute warm up for that horse on the horse to figure out the horse before they go into their class. Besides just like gaining your horse knowledge and horse skills on the team, what are some other like personal benefits you could gain from being on the team? Leadership skills. We have team captains. Leadership time management is a big one. Students struggle with that sometimes. Social skills. You have to be able to work with others and talk to other people. So that's a big one too. Well those are all the questions I have for you today. Thank you so much for coming on and giving us your time. You're welcome. Thanks for having me.