Horsing around
Olivia DeCesar, instructor and trainer at Fallowfield Stables, Charleroi, takes “Land Ho!,” her 11-year-old Oldenburg gelding along the outdoor arena at the stables.
It wouldn’t surprise anyone who knew Olivia DeCesar in high school or college to learn that she has made a career out of working with horses.
DeCesar was known to carry her saddle on a five-mile walk from a trolley stop to stables to ride her horse while she attended Mt. Lebanon High School.
“I was always obsessed with horses,” says DeCesar, 34, an instructor and trainer at Fallowfield Stables in Fallowfield Township.
She began working in 2004 at the 34-acre farm owned by Sue Thomas, who purchased it two years earlier. DeCesar’s programs have grown from just a few students at the time, to between 70 and 90 a season. This is a school where a student doesn’t have to be from a wealthy family to participate in programs.
“It’s not about who can buy the best horse,” DeCesar says.
Two scholarship funds have been set up to underwrite a student’s costs, including one that allows children enrolled in programs at LeMoyne Multicultural Community Center in East Washington to learn to ride horses.
“It allows all income levels to compete,” DeCesar says.
DeCesar also coaches the equestrian team at Washington & Jefferson College and has even had W&J students from China and France.
“That’s an experience they wouldn’t be able to have anywhere else,” says DeCesar, who lives in Charleroi.
Joyce Ellis, executive director of the LeMoyne Center, says children there can chose to visit the stables among many experiences that are available during her summer camp program. Nearly 80 percent of the children who attend the camp come from struggling, disadvantaged families.
“I wanted a program that would level the playing ground,” Ellis says of her decision to include the stables as a camp option. “I wanted them to have the same experiences that kids from Upper St. Clair could get. We’re exposing them to a part of the world that they would never have experienced.”
W&J students who take riding lessons from DeCesar have consistently qualified for the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association competitions for the past four years, says Christopher Faulk, assistant director of intramural and club sports at the college in Washington and East Washington.
“Olivia has been a huge help to the team as she has provided a wonderful stable for our girls’ horses and a place for them to practice that is not very far from the school,” says Faulk, who also is head tennis coach at the college.
The W&J team, as well as another from the Mon Valley, train and compete in hunter seat equitation where they are judged on their riding style on horses they are unfamiliar with and their ability to handle jumps.
“They judge the rider’s ability to smoothly control a horse over jumps two-to-three-feet high,” DeCesar says. “It’s all subjective to the judges’ opinion.”
The farm is home to 37 horses. Some of them are retired while others are either in boarding or in training.
For more information about the stables, visit fallowfieldstables.net.