Senior Gianna Chimino is a busy student at DGS from the hours of 8 a.m. to 2:25 p.m. Once the bell rings, she goes straight into horseback riding mode.  With the workload of a senior, it’s hard to juggle horseback riding and school work.

With the time she spends at the barn training for horse shows, she doesn’t have much time left to spend doing school work. 

“It’s hard, but I make it happen. It really helps that I don’t have an eighth period this year because I’m able to go ride right after school and be done around 3:45 p.m.” Chimino said.

 Besides her weekly practice times, Chimino occasionally misses Fridays when she has a horse show.  

Chimino began riding horses at age five, and has been obsessed with horses ever since then.  She knew that riding horses was her passion from a young age. 

“When I was little for birthday parties… we would get those horses that you can have and do little trail rides in our dead end.  We’d just do a lap and all the kids got to get on a pony and walk around, and it was really fun. That’s how I was like ‘OK this is what I want to do’ and then I got in, and I haven’t gotten out,” Chimino said.

The only thing in Chimino’s path was a heart defect she was born with that needed to be operated on, forcing her to take a break until she was eight.  Besides heart problems, Chimino has battled multiple broken bones in her feet, broken both pinky fingers, and was almost strangled on a fall, yet she continued to ride after each obstacle.  Quickly after the heart surgery, she knew it was time to get back to riding.

“We would go on family trips and stuff, and we would do trail rides, and in the middle of a trail ride I’d turn to my mom and I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to start lessons again because this is what I want to do,’” Chimino said.

Although she does not plan on continuing her riding career in college, riding will always be a part of her.

“It’s taught me so much stuff; I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have horses.  A lot of the life lessons I’ve learned have been from horseback riding. So if I didn’t have that, I really don’t know what I’d do with myself,” Chimino said.