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Summer 2024

Class Act

Natalie Sander smiles while posing for a photo with a horse standing beside her.
Sander at Wingait Farms. Photo by Michael P. King

 

When Natalie Sander BS’24 graduated in May with a degree in agricultural business management, she left behind an impressive legacy: a strong and successful Wisconsin Hoofer Riding Club, reinvigorated after the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sander’s transition to higher education didn’t go as expected, a common theme among college-bound high school graduates of 2020. Her first two years on the UW campus were filled with virtual classes.

“It was definitely a weird start. I didn’t actually have the ‘college experience’ until my junior and senior years,’’ says Sander, who grew up riding horses in rural Mazomanie, Wisconsin. She joined the Wisconsin Union’s Hoofer Riding Club at the end of her sophomore year to meet fellow horse lovers.

But the club was not in a good place. Like most student organizations, it had suspended events during the pandemic and lost members. And it faced a bigger challenge, says Hoofer club advisor Pete Buscaino. Before the pandemic hit, the student-run club had sold its stable and horses because it could not keep up with the expenses.

To restart the club, student leaders had to envision a new way of planning and hosting horse events. Luckily, Sander already knew the horse business. She and her twin sister, Nicole, began riding at age 8 at Wingait Farms near their home. Nicole soon lost interest, but Natalie loved it and began doing chores and helping out at horse camps for young riders. She also showed the stable’s Morgan horses, won regional Youth of the Year awards from the American Morgan Horse Association multiple times, and competed nationally three times. Morgan horses are a compact, versatile breed, and one of the first to be developed in the United States. Sander enjoys their “big personalities and willingness to please.”

“She has a true passion for Morgans and a good eye for horses — and that is something you can’t teach,’’ says Wingait owner Anita Fancsali. “You either have it or you don’t.”

Despite having sold its stable and horses, Hoofers still owned a lot of gear, and Sander began taking it to tack sales, where she connected with area stables. Soon, Buscaino says, Hoofers built a network of four local stables willing to host student lessons and events. He says Sander helped change the focus of the club, which had emphasized the English Hunting style of riding, by establishing relationships with stables that taught Western style and trail riding.

Three Gaits, an equine therapy stable just south of Madison in Stoughton, recently hosted a Hoofers Horsemanship 101 clinic that drew students and community members. Hoofers also brought ponies to the Memorial Union Terrace for UW’s Winter Carnival and Welcome Week, and they have organized trail rides.

Sander served as the club’s president during her senior year and won the Hoofer Leadership Award her junior year in recognition of her outstanding efforts to raise funds and grow membership. The riding club was voted Hoofer Club of the Year for the 2023–24 academic year.

“It was such a huge culture shift,’’ Buscaino says. “For the outing club, they just had to get back out on the trails, and for the sailing club, they just had to get back out in the boats. But the riding club needed a mentality shift and to envision a new way to operate. It wouldn’t have been possible without people like Natalie.”

Sander also won a Renk Agribusiness Scholarship, and for her senior capstone project, she worked on a business plan with a Fitchburg family farm that runs a horse boarding stable. Now, with the tools of her CALS education at her disposal, she hopes to find a job in the horse industry or possibly with a university extension service.

“I enjoyed my time in CALS,” Sander says. “I liked coming into a small school and into a small major. I know everyone in my classes and know all my professors. I really liked that.”

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