Chase Harvey

One of my absolute favorite moments from my study abroad was going to Salzburg, Austria, for two days. It was just stunning to see the nature surrounding the city, and the people we interacted with were incredibly friendly. On our tour, we saw many spots where Mozart worked and other composers traveled and some spots where The Sound of Music was filmed!

One of our day trips was to a town near Vienna, and it was such an amazing trip. It was a cultural excursion teaching us about the ways of living in these smaller towns. In this picture, I am sliding down a farmer's hill so we could get back on the road and say hello to the farmers. 

This moment was probably the highlight of my entire study-abroad trip. Luckily, we all got a one-week break in the middle of our trip due to Austria having many national holidays and the academic schedule we had. Therefore, I did my first solo trip around Europe and visited many cities. However, my biggest decision was to see this sculpture in Prague, Czechia, which I had been interested in for several years: Franz Kafka - Rotating Head by David Cerny. I facetimed my friends and had them watch the sculpture move with me for an hour. I definitely recommend seeing this statue if you ever go to Prague.

Hello! My name is Grace Silverman, and I'm a '25 studying Environmental Studies and Public Policy. I started taking horseback riding lessons in sixth grade. After my elementary school graduation, my mom was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. My parents signed me up to take lessons with a friend over the summer while my mom was going through treatment. Thankfully, my mom is fine now, but I loved being at the barn and riding so much that I kept it up.

I’ve really enjoyed being on the team. We are one of the smaller teams with usually around a dozen or more riders on the roster. Our small size definitely improves team cohesiveness. Small practices give me the chance to talk with and get to know all my teammates, and they were some of the first friends I made when I got to Dartmouth.

Dartmouth owns a barn in Etna, NH, which is a 15-minute drive from campus. Morton Farm is in a beautiful spot in the hills with plenty of turnout space for the horses. There is an indoor arena attached to the barn for winter practices in addition to an outdoor jump arena and a dressage court. There is also some good trail riding on the property, so sometimes we have fun hacking out while the weather is nice.

While competing in the fall and spring, we practice 4-5 days a week. We also lift in Floren varsity gym twice a week. Our coaches Tenley Walsh and Megan McGill are very experienced, and the team has a string of 16 fantastic horses for us to practice and compete on. During practices, we receive a lot of feedback so we can put in the best ride possible in the show ring.

The team competes in equitation over fences and on the flat; however, team members have experience in several different disciplines (jumpers, hunter, eventing, saddle seat). I have a hunter background and was on an IEA team in high school.

Team practices are a significant time commitment, but there are many available resources to help us effectively manage our workload. The Dartmouth Peak Performance (DP2) program offers academic support and career counseling services

One of my favorite memories with the team is traveling to Lynchburg, Virginia over spring break. Switching to NCEA has given us the opportunity to travel to competitions farther away. Through these trips, I have gotten to spend much more time with my teammates visiting places across the US that I’ve never been to before. Traveling to ECAC conference championships with the team this year was special because the whole team got to be in Virginia together.