When she took over heading up the Saddle Seat discipline of Stephens College’s equestrian program in July 2014, Kelly Hulse was already an Adjunct Professor there since the Fall of 2013.

“I was so excited and happy to be able to continue working with the girls I had come to know well.”

After Stephens College advertised in a national search for the full-time position, Adjunct Professor Kelly applied. Following the review of all the applicants, the school’s selection committee offered the job to Kelly.

In her Stephens job, Kelly teaches “three riding/driving classes, currently using 16 American Saddlebreds, Hackneys, and Morgans,” she said in our December interview.

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How old were you when you acquired your first American Saddlebred and what was its name?

When I was about nine years old I began showing Elle Dee in equitation and then show pleasure. Lady Sonja, she was a three-gaited mare for the Blacklaws out in Oregon. They retired her to be a broodmare and then gave her to us. She had several nice colts for us.

What or who inspired you to become involved with American Saddlebreds?

I showed ponies out in the Northwest as a kid, and had always admired the Saddlebreds. There were some really good trainers to watch and learn from out there. Trainers like Dal Hope, Joe Biles, Don Deardorff, John Jones and Virgil Helm all had great strings of horses back then.

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It was somewhere around midnight at the World’s Championship Horse Show when I found myself seated in a director’s chair at the Larry Ella Stables and Bent Tree Farm Ltd. stabling area, listening to Karen Waldron speak. I was exhausted; the evening session had dragged on as sessions at Louisville will do, and a wood chip mulch cross-country trek in heels was the price I’d paid for the interview. But as she began to speak I quickly forgot all of that. Who was this woman? And why weren’t there more of her? 

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