Local equestrian wins statewide competition

Published 8:30 pm Sunday, September 30, 2018

Ever since Kara Kelsey was a kid, the Baldwin County resident has ridden and trained horses.

“I’ve been riding horses since I was born, but by myself, it’s probably been since I was 2 or 3,” said Kelsey. “I got into barrel racing through my dad — he’s always done it ever since I can remember.”

From the time Kelsey was a child, she watched her father, Dirk Council, ride and train horses at Council Farm, the family’s tucked-away ranch in south Baldwin County. 

For as long as Kelsey can remember, Council has hosted competitions for the South Ogeechee Barrel Racing Association, a regional federation of competitive riders under the Georgia Federation of Saddle Clubs, Georgia’s premiere equestrian governing body. In the 20-plus years she has been exposed to competitive riding, Kelsey has been one of the federation’s most competitive riders, winning SOBRA and statewide barrel racing events nearly every year from the time she was in elementary school. 

“On another horse, in fact, this is my first time not running him since I was 10, I won 16 state titles, and this past show I won one first place with my new horse, Sissy,” she said. “There’s a winner for every age group, but I’m considered a part of the ‘Ladies’’ class, which is ages 20 through 38.”

For the past 15 years, Kelsey competed in the pole bending and cone events, which test a horse and rider’s ability to navigate a timed series of obstacles. While Kelsey has dominated the barrel racing field for a decade and a half, perhaps her most impressive win came earlier this month at the GFSC’s annual state show in Perry. 

“We retired my other horse because he’s 29 now and he’s just too old to run anymore,” said Kelsey. “We were trying out new horses and the new horse and I did well, but it wasn’t great, so my dad said, ‘Why don’t you try my horse?’ He rides too, but he’s always kind of been more of my biggest fan, so he’d rather see me do well than himself. I tried his horse, and we ended up doing really well together, so a couple weeks before the state show I ran his horse for the first time.”

In the weeks leading up to to the state show, Kelsey and Council’s horse, Sissy, spent several days per week training and practicing obstacle patterns for the big event. During their training, Kelsey found that Sissy had a knack for the arena race, a timed event testing a horse’s agility in running circles around barrels in an arena. When the day finally came for the state show in Perry, Sissy’s long hours of training and hard work paid off.

“When it came to the state horse show, that was the first time I had ever ridden Sissy in a horse show at all,” she said. “I was the very first run we did, and she did really well. … We ran a 9.5 [finished the course in 9.5 seconds] and I didn’t think it was going to win, but it did. It was all kind of a blur — those 9.5 seconds go by really, really fast.”

In a sport where horses and riders develop bonds that span across decades, the fact that Kelsey was able to win on her first competitive run riding Sissy is an enormous achievement. Given her physical prowess and extremely experienced rider, conditions were ripe for Sissy to dominate the GFSC field for years to come, but shortly after coming home from the event, the champion horse fell gravely and suddenly ill.

“She actually picked up a virus at the state horse show,” said Kelsey of Sissy. “Sunday afternoon she was fine, but Monday morning she didn’t eat her food, and around lunchtime, she had a fever of 105, which is like a 106 or 107-degree fever for people … Tuesday, she basically went downhill … they eventually had to put her down, and that was really sad.”

In the prime of her life and at peak physical condition, not even Sissy was strong enough to combat her mysterious neurological ailment. Despite the tragic passing of the horse she had formed such a special bond with, Kelsey is happy for the experience they shared.

“To be honest, I haven’t thought about what I’ll do now,” she said. “I don’t really have a straightforward answer.”

Kelsey and her father, Dirk, will host a SOBRA regional barrel race at Council Farm, located at 848 Council McCranie Road, Saturday, Oct. 13. Races begin at 9 a.m., and all are welcome.