Page 70 - June 2018 Speedhorse

Front row: Kimberly Lazo, Heydi Montalvo, Alexandra Moreno, Laura Ramirez, Elisabeth Powell, Peyton Anderson; Middle row: teacher Kelsey Sullivan, Jett Rush, Alyssa Wiley. Reyes Flores, Grecia Morales, Jacob Boschert, Rachel Wright, Lauren Reyes, Elizabeth Mendez, Briana Alvarado; Back row: Jestine Neorr,
Diana Jaime, Mikeal Doverspike, Genesis Rumaldo, Katherine Kurylas, Kaie’Ana Waiters, Rebecca Valdez, and teacher Melanie Sherman
Lone Star Park
REACHES OUT TO STUDENTS
Jerry Burgess Leads Program to Introduce High Schoolers To High-Speed Horses
by Richard Chamberlain • photos by Marie Littlefield
Springtime in Texas, early morning on the track: The next class of youngsters are going to the starting gate, learning how to stand and break, figuring out what is expected, internalizing their lessons.
In a few minutes, the youngsters will be taken back to the barns, where they’ll watch a veterinarian scope a racehorse, hear a horseman describe training techniques, listen to a steward detailing test barn procedure . . .
Wait, what?
Okay, whoa, back up a moment. The youngsters we’re talking about are not horses. They are young people being introduced to horses, seniors and juniors in the veterinary studies program at South Grand Prairie High
School, not far from where “Jerry’s Kids” are welcomed to Lone Star Park.
A racing steward at the track in the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Jerry Burgess in his day as a top-flight jockey rode Bugs Alive In 75 to score in the 1975 All American Futurity (now Grade 1) and earned Dash For Cash’s first black type in the 1975 Lubbock Downs Futurity. Now, Jerry is doing what he can to sustain and expand what has been his life’s work.
“We need more young people in our industry,” Jerry says. “We’re kind of running out of people, it seems like. I’d like to see more young people get in the business.”
Trying to get young people into the racing side of the industry is a common thread today.
AQHA and affiliates, such as the Texas QHA and Oklahoma QHRA, have similar programs, though they are geared toward members of the American Quarter Horse Youth Association who already have an interest in horses. The young people at Lone Star Park on this morning are polite and focused, listening, paying close attention and asking pertinent, perceptive questions, even though few of them have ever been around horses, and only one of them had ever been to a track, where his parents let him put a couple bucks on a few horses.
“This has changed my insight,” says Reyes Flores, an 18-year-old senior who hopes to become a marine biologist. “I like it. I’ve never been back here, in the barns and all, but I like
68 SPEEDHORSE, June 2018