by Cassidy Nunn | photos by Nunn Other Photography –
If you hear loud music and a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ going on around the arena at the Saanich Fairgrounds for the annual Saanich Fair, it’s likely that the Vancouver Island Coastal Cowgirls Drill Team has arrived. The group of young women mounted on their spirited horses and decked out in their royal blue button-up shirts, fringed chaps and black cowgirl hats with long ponytails a-flyin’ have been performing and impressing audiences at the Fair and across the province at rodeos and other such events for the past seven years before the pandemic hit. The last two years saw their public appearances having to be cancelled, but this year they’re excited to be back in action.
One of the founding members, Lena McMurtry, came up with the idea for a drill team after she saw one perform elsewhere and thought: “let’s try that at the Saanich Fair!” She helped put together a team of keen horses and riders within a month and debuted their performance at the Fair that fall to an overwhelmingly positive response. They were asked to come back the next year, which is when Jenna Saunders joined the team as a “fill-in.”
“I got hooked!” Jenna says with a laugh, and has since been one of the core team members. For 2022, they’ve included two more horse-and-rider teams, adding a new but welcome challenge into their choreography, which the ladies all come up with themselves. Early in the year, the team sits down with a white board to brainstorm the different movements; every year they try to add something new into the performance. Then they write it out in steps before attempting it on horseback.
In March the team begins with weekly practices, which are done mostly at a walk to get the horses, and their riders, used to the patterns, movements and distances they need to keep between each other. They ramp up their practice schedule to a couple times a week as the season approaches and then the week before a performance they are out at the Saanich Fairgrounds practising every day. This also allows the team to slowly and carefully bring their horses to the fitness level required for the often five to 10 minutes long event. They build up from the walk to practising at a trot, a lope and finally, only when they’re about a week away do they practise at a full gallop because “the horses get really racey!” says Lena. It’s apparent, when you see them in action, that the horses get just as fired up as their riders when putting on a show.
“It takes such a specific horse and rider to do the movements at the speed we do them,” says Jenna. Most of the horses used for the drill team are Quarter Horses who are “very well trained,” she says, and come with a background in either reining or cow horse events.
“We try to highlight reining maneouvres,” adds Lena, citing the western riding sport that includes fast spins, sliding stops and roll back – all very exciting movements for a crowd to watch. Other fun moves the team often includes are standing up on the saddle and the zipper movement, featuring the horses, at high speed, zipping in and out past each other somehow without colliding.
The team also takes care to expose the horses to all sorts of potentially “spooky” situations, including bulls in chutes at rodeos, loud music, large groups of rowdy people and rodeo-type events.
The music is another factor that requires a fair bit of work and consideration. “We make our music to match the routine,” says Jenna, which means tweaking the music to match the arena size they’re going to be performing in. “There’s a lot of time and effort that goes into it but once you’re there it’s so fun!” says Lena.
To find out more about the Vancouver Island Coastal Cowgirls, and where you can see them performing next, check out their Facebook page: Vancouver Island Coastal Cowgirls.
