As of last school year, the Equestrian team from PVHS has been disbanded. 

The decision was made by the district earlier in 2018 due to presented issues of legal liabilities concerning the team.

“Everything in our school district is usually concerning liability and rules, so the district looked at all of the different factors and decided that it was a program that they couldn’t continue anymore,” Athletic Director Brian Shapiro said when asked about the reasoning behind this decision.

Senior Jessica Bahny, who competed with the team her freshman and sophomore year, was disappointed with the team’s disbandment saying “they could’ve offered us a little leeway,” but ultimately understood the reasoning behind the teams removal.

“Obviously the district can’t buy all of our horses, all of our coaches, the places we ride,” Bahny said. “That’s not reasonable.”

Although the ruling to disband the team seems to have come out of the blue, realistically it has been a long time coming.

“There wasn’t an injury or fatality or a lawsuit or anything like that,” Shapiro said.

 “I think the school district started to realize that the … requirements they needed to be able to provide insurance and do those kinds of things for a program, they weren’t able to [do for] the equestrian program.”

After the removal of the class, the PVHS equestrian team moved to become the Equestrian Competition Club in order to continue riding together. 

This, however, fell apart recently this year.

“Some seniors kept it going as a club. But we really didn’t do anything last year. So it just didn’t happen this year, unfortunately,” Bahny said.

Despite these setbacks, it is clear that the memories made competing together will memorialize the riders’ time on the team.

“When I was there, spending time with the girls, you know, hanging out and catching up with them, being able to see them compete in their different disciplines was really fun,” Bahny said.