62 SIDELINES APRIL 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Work To Ride Saves Lives
Brandon Rease, Ken Shaun Walker, Nacho Figueras, Kareen Rosser, Sheree Harris, Shariah Harris at the Veuve Clicquot Classic.
Photo by Lezlie Hiner
By Lauren R. Giannini
I
n 1994 Lezlie Hiner embarked on a quest: to share her
passion for horses with kids from tough urban neighbor-
hoods near Chamounix Equestrian Center on the edge of
Fairmount Park in West Philadelphia. She needed a powerful
“hook” for the predominately African-American kids, something
that would reach deep into soul and spirit. Lezlie happened to be
playing polo at the time and the rest, as they say, is Work To Ride
history.
“I started playing polo in 1995 at Bucks County Polo Club and
then I gave the kids a job grooming and they started going to
matches with me,” recalled Lezlie. “It didn’t take long for them to
decide they wanted to play.”
Always horse crazy, Lezlie didn’t get her first horse until she
was in 10th grade. “I was
on and off racehorses from
the time I was 18,” said
Lezlie, who grew up in
Chicago and New Jersey
before moving to Pennsyl-
vania. “I earned a degree in
Psychology, did a couple of
years of sales and decided
I wanted to get back into
horses. There was no ah-
hah! moment, but for years
I had been interested in an-
imal therapy even though in
the 1980s there were no re-
search programs to support
its merits.”
Put horses and West
Philly kids together, arm
them with mallets and the result can be success or mayhem, but
this potent formula proved to be just right – thanks to Work To
Ride’s fearless founder. “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears
from 1995 to 1999 to get the program really going and I still work
70 hours a week, even though I have cut down from 85-90,” Lezlie
said.
Polo, long considered the Sport of Kings, became the Sport of
West Philly Youth. First, however, they had to be able to ride and
that meant learning to take care of the horses. Lezlie set standards
and established boundaries and rules. She drove them hard, all
the while planting thoughts about courtesy, manners, ethics, mor-
als, self-discipline, and the importance of education in their young
and still impressionable, albeit jaded, minds.
“Over the years, I would guess that we’ve had 25 graduate from
the Work To Ride program,” said Lezlie. “We try to tell the kids be-
fore they come in that the
program is not easy. So far,
10 have gone to college.”
That’s an amazing suc-
cess rate, considering that
WTR kids are exposed
daily to drug and alcohol
abuse, gangs, gangland-
style shootings and mind-
numbing poverty. Now in
its 20th year, Work To Ride
is a win-win situation. Even
when kids don’t make it all
the way through, they often
carry with them the ben-
efits of their Work To Ride
experiences and aim their
sights higher than peers
e
Polo
Continued on page 64
Kareem Rosser earned the 2011 Polo Training Foundation Male
Scholastic Player of the Year, flanked by Danny Scheraga, Lezlie Hiner,
and Ian Angus.
Photo by Amy Wisehart – Courtesy of USPA
