It may have been just a schooling show, but for amateur dressage rider Kacie Linegar, scoring in the high-70s at first level on her Friesian Sport Horse Sir Alexander this fall meant more to her than any other score she’s ever earned.
The mother of a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins, Linegar juggles riding, a family and running her own business near Houston, Texas. While she may never ride in the light of day and sacrifices sleep for her passion, earning those scores showed her she’s still able to balance it all.
Kacie Linegar juggles her time carefully to devote time to her full-time job, parenting three daughters and her riding goals.
“It proves to me that I can still do it. I didn’t realize I needed that proof until I got it—that I can be a mom of three babies and have a full-time job and have a limited budget and still get out there and ride at that level,” she said. “It gave me this energy. There had been a question mark until that point. The judge is a well-respected judge in the area. Her comments about my horse being without question upper level potential, we got many 9s in all three of the tests we rode at first level. I need that so much. I know feel that it’s OK to be a bit unconventional with how I approach it and not really have the resources. We can still somehow figure out a way to be competitive, so I’m really excited for 2016.”
Linegar grew up riding in Pony Club and on the local hunter and equitation circuit in Connecticut, and continued riding a bit while attending Connecticut College. She earned a degree in political science and ended up in a consulting role with IBM with the government.
“I’m an amateur in every sense of the word,” she said. “I have very rarely ever owned a made show horse. I was always very competitive mentally, and I always worked very hard to train and to ride and to get to shows, but more often than not I would be entering the show ring riding a Quarter Horse.”
After she met now-husband, Kirt while he was in the Coast Guard, the couple was transferred to Houston. Kacie fell in love with project management consulting and now works in the oil and gas industry, with Chevron as her main client.
She became interested in dressage when her equitation horse during college had a career-ending injury. After having her oldest daughter, Charlotte, Kacie saved and scraped together enough money to buy Sir Alexander, or “Sander,” when he was a green-broke 3-year-old.
“It’s probably the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “I found him on warmbloods.com. I’ve never had a lot of income in order to support horses or the equestrian world, but I’ve somehow always, through the support and love of my family, figured out a way to make it work, even though it’s never been something that the door has been fully wide open to pursue this.”
Sander proved easy to train and has even spent some time in the hunter and equitation ring.
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“He’s like a Labrador. He’s so trainable, and he tries so hard, and he’s just so consistent,” said Kacie. “That’s so important to me, because my world is anything but consistent right now. I can’t get out five days a week. It’s very up in the air when I’m able to get out and how I’m able to fit it in. No matter when I show up, he’s ready to work, and he doesn’t give me a hard time for it. He’s just kind of a bright spot in this chaos of a world I live in.”
Kacie’s twin girls Georgia and Caroline were a surprise. Her doctor warned her it could be a risky pregnancy, so she decided not to ride and sent Sander to dressage trainer Gina Collier.
“I was huge! I was miserable,” she said. “I actually kept my dressage saddle in my bedroom next to my bed so that I could see it and be reminded of how that’s so important to me. When you’re not able to do something that you love so much, it kind of tears you up inside. It was something that gave me some motivation to keep on resting for the babies and hoping they would make it into this world OK.”
Thankfully, the girls were born healthy, but Kacie’s world was all of a sudden thrown into more chaos with the unexpected additions.
Her typical day involves getting up at 5 a.m., and being out the door by 6:30 for an hour and a half trip to work on a commuter bus. She works at client sites throughout the day, hops back on the bus at night, picks up her daughters from daycare, then it’s dinner, baths and bedtime. After they’re down, she rallies to head to the barn sometime around 8:30 p.m.
Riding in the dark is the norm for Kacie Linegar and Sir Alexander.
“My girls are the most important thing in the world to me, without question, so I make a point to not take time away from them by riding,” she said. “They don’t see me a lot of the day, so when they do see me, I want to be present, and I want to be focused on them. What that means personally is that I sacrifice my evenings and my sleep.”
She’s back home by 11:30 p.m. or so, goes to bed, then starts it all again the next day. “I have to closely manage my own personal health so I don’t cut out too much sleep,” she said. “I have to admit at night, after getting the girls to bed and it’s dark, you’re sooo tired. The hardest part of it all is getting myself out the door to the barn. As soon as I get to the barn, I’ve never regretted going.”
Once a month Kacie, 33, looks forward to riding in the daylight with her trainer, Danny Warrington, who flies to Texas from Maryland to teach at her barn.
When she does bring the girls to the barn, Kacie enlists the help of Kirt, and some sand toys and donuts as bribery, to squeeze a ride in. If she just brings one child, she’s often able to manage on her own for a short ride.
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“It gets them out in the open, playing in the dirt, which is good for kids. It allows me to ride during the day! Those are the kinds of things that before kids, I so took for granted. Riding in the daylight is something that people don’t think about,” she said. “[Kirt] still to this day doesn’t understand why I’m riding in circles after all these years, but he’s so supportive about how important it is to me.”
The rare times that Kacie Linegar gets to ride by daylight, she shares her passion with 4-year-old daughter.
To keep herself motivated, Kacie tries to have show goals. “My immediate goals—to fit back into my dressage show coat,” she said. “I still have about 10 to 15 pounds of my pregnancy weight to lose. I need to do that by January because my goal next year is to get out in the rated world. I’m currently showing at first level and schooling second and third level at home. I’d love to get my first level scores confirmed towards my bronze medal. I’d be tickled pink if I could get my second level scores, but that’s a stretch for me at this point.”
She’s also found that she enjoys the little things at the barn now, like spending time cleaning tack, bathing and grooming.
Having a sense of self has also helped keep her grounded. “You can get very lost in becoming a mother or staying a professional, or whatever your life throws at you,” she said. “Identifying what’s important and what’s yours as a person has helped keep me centered. My identity as an equestrian has helped remind me that I’m still me, even though so much has changed. It didn’t realize how important being an equestrian was to my identity until so much changed. I just had to fight so hard to keep a part of my identity.”
Her advice to other amateurs is to realize that time management is important.
Sir Alexander says hello to Kacie Linegar’s daughters.
“You just have to be very conscious about how you’re spending every minute of your day. You have to make a lot of decisions around that. Do I do this, or do I do that? You don’t have the luxury of doing both anymore. You just have to be very careful and focus on what your priorities are, then let the rest go and not suck up your time.”
She also advises to managing your expectations. “I’m not riding during the time of day that I want to, I’m not riding as much as I want to. I’m not showing as much as I want to. But I’ve come to accept that that’s OK. Just because it’s different than the way I would choose to do it or it’s different than the way I used to do it, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still be successful,” she said.
And lastly, Kacie always tries to be grateful. “There are so many pieces that have to fall into place to make this all work. I have healthy kids, I have a very successful business that provides me with the income that even enables me to have a horse. I have the support and energy of my family backing me. Having that perspective and knowing that I’m so blessed. It makes everything, the chaos and the lack of sleep, worth it.”
