Gait keeper
High school senior sees his future in equestrian dressage
— Submitted
Photo
— Sierra Star/Lacey Rees
After school each
day, David Sischo heads for the YLP stables to groom and work out with
Harrier. David spends three hours a day
after school and works on weekends at the Chaffee Zoo running Camel rides.
— Submitted Photo
David Sischo, when he
was 9, bought his first horse, Cricket, with money he earned himself.
YOSEMITE LAKES PARK — It isn’t
unusual for a second grader to announce that he would like to own a horse. But
for that child to walk his neighbors’ dogs and clean out stalls for the next
two years to earn the $300 to buy that horse — well, that is unusual.
David Sischo, now a Yosemite High
School senior, was that child, and if one word could describe him, it would be
“focus” — a focus that so far has
earned him the title of California’s highest scoring junior male dressage
rider.
He’s 18 now, and beginning in
April, will move up to compete as an amateur with other adults. But getting to
this skill level has taken years of … focus.
When he was 7, his second-grade
teacher let him ride her pony “Cricket,” a part Welsh and part Shetland. That’s
when he started working and saving money for a horse. Meanwhile, she sold the
pony, but when the new owners were ready to sell, he was ready to buy.
Fully-equipped
pony
Cricket came equipped with a
saddle, bridle and an attitude. David admits that most of the some 25 times he
has been unsaddled, it was Cricket’s doing.
He remembers the first time, about age 10. He and some friends had set
up poles in the arena, and when Cricket took a sharp turn, David fell, knocking
the wind out of him. “It was traumatic. I cried. But my parents made me jump
back on,” he says.
As he grew, David rode the pony
“until my feet drug on the ground,” but he had already moved to a larger horse,
an Arabian and quarter horse mix named Zinfandel. He was taking riding lessons
and experimented with team penning and trail rides but eventually “fell in love
with the English style” of riding and acquired all the English tack.
He started serious training to
compete and acquired, in the ninth grade, a Dutch Warmblood-cross mare named
Czarina. Cricket was sold to help pay for the new horse, with some financial
help from his parents.
Czarina was 6 years old and
hadn’t been worked much. “All she knew was how to go forward,” he says. He
schooled her six days a week. “You have to be real creative to get the horse to
do what you want,” he says. The horse needs to know all the gaits well — the
walk, trot and canter — and all their cues from the rider.
In ninth grade David went to a
horse show where Grand Prix dressage riders performed, his first exposure to
the sport. He knew then that was the direction he wanted to take his riding.
Dressage
bound
“It’s kind of like ballet on
horseback,” he explains. Dressage means “training” in French. The horse learns
to execute its gaits in a very exacting manner. Normally a horse carries 60% of
its weight on the front legs and shoulders. Dressage teaches it to transfer
most of its weight to its hindquarters to get a lightness of movement.
“It develops the horse’s muscles
to get the extended trots and really beautiful movement,” he says. But it takes
a “whole lot of time” because not only are you training the brain, but the
weight training develops the horse’s muscles. “The horse gets to be like
butter; you can bend him in any way.”
First
at first show
His first show was in Clovis in
December 2000, during his high school junior year. Dressage competitors perform
precise patterns of movements and figures depending on their level of
proficiency. He took two first places in his level. “I wasn’t expected to win,
so that was a confidence builder,” he remembers.
After two more shows the
following spring, netting him three firsts and one second place, he qualified
for the California Junior Championship held in Rancho Murieta last August. It
was a much higher level of competition, but he took reserve champion, “A fancy
word for second place,” he says with a grin.
He sold Czarina “because she didn’t have the capability to go
further,” but he had made her a more valuable horse. He bought Harrier (like
the jet), a Dutch Warmblood gelding who has been trained through fourth-level
dressage and has the potential to go much further.
Has he ever had his horse behave
badly in a competition? No, but he did go off course one time, and that was
embarrassing. The bell rang, and the test had to be redone. “It rattles you.
You have to pretend it never happened. You have to wipe it out of your mind,”
he says, “because you can still save your test.” He still took first place that
time.
His next competition will be in
April.
In
the meantime
Riding may be his focus, but he
still has schoolwork, for which he carries a 3.9 grade point average. He is
enrolled in International Baccalaureate classes and is a member of the
California Scholarship Federation and Future Farmers of America. He still
spends three hours a day after school with the horse, “if you include grooming,
mucking (cleaning stalls) and riding,” he says.
And then there are the camels.
Serious riding can be a very expensive sport. He credits his parents, Richard
and Shelly Sischo, for helping him financially, (“Buying the horse is the cheap
part,” he says.) but he does his part, too.
His mother works for the Special
Events Department at the Chaffee Zoo, and David, from the time he was 10,
volunteered to help out at the Zoo functions. “I work at all her events,” he
says, adding they are “22-hour days.”
Now he is on the zoo payroll as
an animal keeper and trainer of the Zoo Society’s camels. He also conducts
camel rides at which he works three days a week during summer and an all-day
shift on Sundays during the school year. He will attend California State
University, Fresno, this fall to major in biology, and plans to work his camel
duties around his classes.
He has helped others, younger
than he, with riding tips, but cannot take payment or he would lose his amateur
status.
Always
learning
He — and Harrier — also take
classes in the Valley from his coach, Ariane Rezvani, a U.S. Dressage
Federation medallist. “Sometimes she will put me on one of her horses, and let
it teach me,” he explains, “because it is difficult to train a horse for a
movement you have never done yourself.”
Dressage is more than a hobby for
David; “It is more like a lifestyle,” he says. He plans to go as far as he can,
working his way up through the levels.
This year will be level one and two. Once he gets to four, then it’s the
Intermediare levels. Then the Prix St. George, and finally Grand Prix, which is
the Olympic level.
“I don’t think the Olympics is too far fetched to think about,” he
says just a little nervously. “I would like to study in Germany because that is
where all the riding masters are.”
The love of horses keeps David
going, plus he needs to have a focus, something he can work toward. “It keeps
me grounded,” he says. “It is really a physical sport. Everything influences
the horse’s movements. It takes a lot of strength and coordination.” And then
there is the mental aspect, where he has to be the teacher and weight trainer
to the horse.
“You can do this your whole life
and still not know everything,” he says.
With David Sischo’s dedication,
however, there is likely little he won’t know in the proper amount of time.