Heavy rain and canceling guests would have sullied anyone’s birthday — but Maile Everly (12) was anything but sad. As she sat in a stable, surrounded by the ponies her parents had rented, she found, at 4 years old, what could be decidedly described as her life’s passion.

Now, Everly spends weekends competing and training with her horse Kiwi, a fiery thoroughbred who matches her same eagerness to learn. Going by the stage name Kingston, he recently helped them earn champion in 0.80 meter jumps at Del Mar. Riding with two reins and a smaller saddle, Everly is considered an English rider and, more than that, an adrenaline seeker. Horseback riding is a sport that includes a variety of styles called disciplines. Some popular disciplines include show jumping, rodeo riding, dressage, and cross country riding. Everly said her main focus is jumping. 

 “Jumping is definitely where I want to stay because I just love the rush and flying over things,” Everly said. “It’s really exciting and as the jumps start getting bigger it gets a little more nerve-wracking and you get more adrenaline, so it’s fun.”

 Everly said that growing up she was surrounded by a family of animal lovers. Both her parents worked at the San Diego Zoo, her mom’s side of the family owned horses and her grandma worked at a veterinarian clinic. Her love of horses came naturally and she said riding had always been therapeutic for her, eventually becoming her passion.

“It’s the place where I can really be myself and just be happy with the people that I love and with the horses that I love,” Everly said. “The only future I’ve really seen for myself, if it wasn’t being a zookeeper, has always been working with horses.”

Her current horse partner Kiwi, whom she plans to retire soon, shares her same excitement and thrill in jumping and competing. Despite Kiwi’s old age as he approaches 24, Everly said she is always happy to see his enthusiasm.

“Normally, horses would be retired by now, but he just loves his job and he’s really good at what he does,” Everly said. “He’s super active, which is the reason he’s still going even though his work has slowed down.”

As she approaches bigger heights in jumping at 1.0 to 1.50 meters, Everly said she is training to be better with her timing and Kiwi’s confidence in agility. Everly said she still faced difficulties in maintaining confidence in her abilities.

 “I’m trying to get more consistent with doing meters, but it’s a little scary because things get bigger and then more things can go wrong easier,” Everly said. “I’m personally very hard on myself to try to be the best that I can possibly be, which can be challenging when I don’t have a good round.” 

Throughout the many facilities she’s trained at, Everly said the horses she’s ridden with acted as irreplaceable teachers to her as a rider.

“Kiwi’s really helped me improve to the level I’m at now because he’s the first horse I’ve ever competed at a circuit with,” Everly said. “I really love how excited Kiwi gets. He does this little hop and throws his head and you can tell he’s having a good time.”

However, Everly said her initial experiences with Kiwi were not the easiest, but that they helped her learn a lot about how to handle horses.

“Kiwi wasn’t worked much with his manners so shoving was a huge problem and refusing to stand still, but now he’s calmed down a lot,” she said. “It was a little bit challenging at first trying to figure it out because I never had to deal with many horses [like that], but he’s taught me a lot about how to take care of horses that way.”

Before Kiwi was Everly’s first horse Cosmo, who is now retired, a partner she considered to be her “heart horse,” a term used to describe finding a horse who is like a soul mate. 

“I was still growing when I had [Cosmo], so he helped me get a lot stronger physically and mentally because he helped me work on getting bigger heights and work on what I was comfortable with,” Everly said. “He taught me how to read horses better and he was a lot of firsts: my first one stride, my first 0.90 [meters], my first full, real courses and everything so he was a great teacher.”

Throughout her almost decade of riding, Everly admitted she had many moments where she had considered quitting.

“I’ve thought about quitting a lot because sometimes you just get stuck in these ruts where you feel like you’re not improving and you just feel like you’re doing everything wrong,” she said. “I’ve left the barn more times than I can count, just because I’m like, ‘I’m not good enough at this and I want to give up.’”

Everly said her family were often there to help her through her doubts and give her support.

“It has been a lot of my family wanting what’s best for me and knowing me better than I know myself sometimes and just telling me to keep pushing because they can tell how happy it makes me,” she said.

Working toward both her short-term and long-term dreams, Everly said she is constantly trying to expand her horizon.

“Currently I’m trying to get to [show-jumping] at meters and just finding my own way,” she said. “My goal for the future is having my own horse training business and working professionally with them like going out to Europe and trying things out there.”

Everly said that ultimately, whatever struggles she faced, her unrelenting passion and drive for the sport is the reason she continues to do what she loves.

“The satisfaction after improving and doing something you’ve wanted to achieve for a very long time, it’s really worth it,” she said. “I’m significantly stronger than I used to be, I’m more independent and definitely less shy.”

Without riding, Everly said she wouldn’t have grown into her identity with the same reassurance.

“A really important impact was finding my own confidence and finding out who I [wanted to] be as a person,” she said. “Talking to new people and just discovering different possibilities that I could go into, too. It’s helped me become more comfortable with my actual personality.”