Polson teen, horse compete in USHJAA show
courtesy photo
Monika Frame of Polson competes at the Sacramento International Horse Show, held Oct. 1-6.
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Montana and horses paints images of cowboys at a trot out across the sagebrush, checking cows or gathering for branding.
But a group of riders at Full Sail Farm north of Polson ride English saddles and wear jodhpurs and high boots.
One rider is Polson High School senior Monika Frame. Frame rides and jumps two horses — Loki and Farve, a black gelding.
Loki is gray, a half Irish Sport draft horse and half Thoroughbred, and his name is short for Locomotion. Frame and the two horses competed in hunter, jumping and equitation across the state, and they had a good year.
Even though Loki is young, Frame and Loki qualified for the jumping competition at the United States Hunter Jumper Association Adult, Amateur and Children’s Meter 10 Jumper Regional Finals in Sacramento, Calif.
Frame’s parents bought the horse for her when he was 2, and she’s trained the 5-year-old gelding.
“Monika is a really hard worker and pretty committed. You ask her to do something, and she does it. (Monika) pays attention and learns really quickly,” said Wanda Rosatti, Frame’s coach and trainer.
She began riding in fifth grade and has had her share of being thrown and stepped on.
“I’d never ridden before. I just decided I wanted to start riding,” Frame said. She learned the fundamentals and then began jumping a year later.
“Riding is relaxing. It relieves all my stress,” she said.
Last winter she got another new horse, Seabee, a 17-hand gelding who immediately broke a bone in his leg and needed surgery.
“I’m rehabbing him back,” Frame said.
The Sacramento International Horse Show is a big show, the most challenging Frame had ever been to, and she jumped Loki.
“He likes people. He likes being in your pocket,” she explained.
Frame said her mom, Marilyn, drove to the Sacramento show.
At a show, “We unhook, unload and get our camp set up,” Frame said. “Then you ride your horses to get them loose.”
On a regular show day, Frame said she waits all day to show, usually until about 5 p.m. Her classes are normally back-to-back so she has to switch horses.
Hunter classes are judged on the horse and “how pretty it can be,” Frame said. Equitation is based more on the rider and how he or she manages the horse, and jumping is on speed.
“Jumping is anyone’s game — who jumps clean and who jumps fast,” Rosatti said.
The Sacramento show was strictly a jumping show and set up like an Olympic equestrian team show.
Qualifying for the Sacramento show was a feat in itself, the biggest show Frame had ever competed in, Rosatti explained.
Rosatti has ridden all her life, all kinds of riding, including lots of miles bareback when she a kid. She started taking jumping lessons with a friend when she was 35.
“Jumping is the most fun I’ve ever had,” Rosatti said. ‘I (teach riding and jumping) because I love it.”
And it shows. Rosatti was honored at the Montana Hunter Jumper Sportsman of the Year for coaches and trainers and is also in the running for a national award.
Jumping is one of the only sports in the Olympics where women and men compete on equal footing, Rosatti added.
Frame and some of the other girls who used to ride at Full Sail Farm got jumping approved as a Montana High School Athletic sport, just like any other high school sport such basketball, softball, soccer or rodeo.
“Monika has earned her high school letter three years in a row,” Rosatti said.
To continue her riding in college, Frame has applied to the University of Santa Barbara, Rocky Mountain College and Arizona State University, all of whom offer equestrian programs.
Right now, Frame is out for PHS girls basketball, applying for scholarships and working on her senior year.
