At home in saddle
Shufelt, a Cleveland High senior, excels in equestrian
The superlatives could apply to most any prominent high school athlete: Talented, driven, possessed of a slavish work ethic. In this instance, they are directed at one of New Mexico’s more obscure — but decorated — athletes, yet someone whose high school sport isn’t sanctioned in her home state.
“Our muscles don’t show,” equestrian Rylee Shufelt says with a chuckle. “It’s hard to tell people that we are athletes. (But) it’s a very stressful sport.”
The Cleveland High senior — who recently transferred from La Cueva — recently verbally committed to Texas A&M, one of fewer than 20 Division I universities (including New Mexico State) in the country that offer equestrian as a sport.
Shufelt, who turns 18 on Aug. 31, has been showing horses since she was 4. Her grandfather owned a ranch and was first to put her into a saddle.
“I was on the little pony (when I first started showing),” she said. “I’m gritting my teeth and kicking him because he was very lazy. It is the funniest picture.”
Fast-forward nearly 14 years, and Shufelt is one of the more accomplished equestrian high school athletes in the country. Her list of awards and show titles is an enormous compilation.
Shufelt has shown all over the country, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Colorado to Florida to California.
“She likes to win, she likes to get after it,” said her father, Pete Shufelt. “That was always encouraging. She’s definitely very competitive. She’s always been that way, ever since she was 4 years old.”
She began modestly, often showing at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds.
“My dad loved that I had such a passion for horses,” she said. “I never wanted to be out of the saddle. I’d cry when we had to go home.”
But equestrian is a complex endeavor. It is first and foremost an expensive undertaking; Shufelt herself trains often in suburban Denver, where the horses she shows are housed.
There are other horses here in the North Valley, where she’ll return in a couple of weeks. She is currently in southern California for a two-week stretch of shows.
Then she and her trainers will drive the horses back to the Denver area, and then Shufelt will fly home from there.
All the while, she has begun her senior year of high school online, with Cleveland. The transfer from La Cueva makes her education smoother, as she said being at Cleveland will allow her to do her classes online but still be considered a true high school student. La Cueva, she said, did not offer such an arrangement for all her classes.
In addition to the high cost (the family declined to talk specifics) of the sport, Shufelt faces other hurdles, like the health of her horses, as her best ride has been unavailable to her for the last two years due to physical setbacks with the horse. Plus there is the heavy travel involved as two of her three trainers live in the Denver area and the third in California.
“She’s very dedicated, very driven, very focused,” said her mother, Gina. “It’s taught her so many life lessons, and it is really going to be advantageous for her in the long run.”
Shufelt will compete as an equestrian junior through the end of the calendar year; next year she becomes an amateur as she’ll be 18. But she’s been showing in larger equestrian classes since she was 11, and often competes against older riders, including professionals.
“We have been very successful, and fortunate to have nice horses that have gotten me to the top,” she said.
She also credited her father for her passion.
“He pushed me to be the best,” she said. “He really taught me to strive for as much as I can, and if I have goals, to try and reach them. You cannot do this sport if you do not have the heart for it.”
To that end, it was Shufelt who put herself into the mainstream for college attention, and in A&M, she said, she found a match. She also was looking at Georgia, Baylor and TCU. There are, with so few colleges that offer this sport, limited scholarship opportunities.
“Since there are so many of us in the equestrian community, you’re like a needle in the haystack,” Shufelt said. “You have to stick out.”
Shufelt admits she is most at home in the saddle, where riders are judged on how well they execute the course and how they ride. And there is also the symmetry a rider must have with their animal.
“You want to make it look effortless,” she said. “If you can do that, you can most likely win. … Horse and rider are connected. And if you can execute the course along with it, you’re golden.”
Being on, and around horses, has, Shufelt said, been her true calling. Maybe not forever, but it has filled her youth with some wondrous times.
“It’s my purpose in life,” she said.