| Email: | mhilly@mtholyoke.edu |
| Title: | Dressage Instructor | Head Dressage Coach |
| Phone: | 413-538-3018 |
Hilly was named the head coach of the Mount Holyoke Dressage team in 2014. From the early age of 11, Hilly began showing equitation, hunters and jumpers at the Chenery's Boulder Brook Club in Scarsdale, New York; she remembers the Mount Holyoke Alumna Miss Elizabeth Ham, Mr. Christopher Chenery's secretary, who famously named "Secretariat", as a woman who had a strong childhood influence on young riders at Boulder Brook.
Between high school and college, Hilly apprenticed Philip Ake at Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien, Connecticut. After attending the University of Vermont, earning her degree in Education, she attended the rigorous nine-month Instructors Course at Morven Park International Equestrian Institute, in Leesburg, Virginia under Major John Lynch and was examined by Mary Rose of the British Horse Society.
After completing the Instructor's course at Morven, Hilly went on to teach students and train horses out of her Dana Hill Stable in Waitsfield, Vermont. She also spent many years fox hunting, eventing, playing polo in addition to coaching and competing in Dressage throughout New England. Hilly also has participated in many of the Centered riding Instructors workshops, and in addition to the classical dressage training principles, she is a very much a fan of Sally Swift's teachings and this holistic approach to riding, and turned her energy to the art of Dressage.
To further her education with the United States Dressage Federation programs, Hilly apprenticed FEI rider and USDF Instructor Melanie Tenney at the BHS approved Woodcock Hill in West Willington, Connecticut.
Hilly spent eight years on the Dressage circuit in Florida, where she rode, trained and competed through the Federation Equitation Internationale Prix St. Georges level at recognized shows.
She has taught at the Traditional Equitation School at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank California, where she taught a few college riding classes, and also spent 5 years in Nashville teaching, training and judging out of the Green Pastures Farm facility.
Hilly is also a USDF "L" Judges program graduate, and many of her students have gone on to be judges, as well as trainers and veterinarians. Additionally, she is an artist and a writer, and has contributions in several horse publications.
Her goals for her personal riding in the future are to move up the levels to the Grand Prix. Her goals for the Mount Holyoke Dressage team are to do the best they can and carry on a tradition of top riding and fair sportsmanship, as well as standing for the continued careful stewardship of the horse and the land that they helped build.