Founder, Coach and Instructor

During her 20+ years of competitive riding experience, Tara has had coaching from Lizzie Gingras and Richard Keller. She is currently being mentored by Gareth Graves, Jaclyn Duff and Dayton Gorsline. Tara’s experience with these great coaches has helped her develop a strong foundation to pass on her knowledge to her students. Her dedication to continued education for herself as a rider has made her excited to bring new knowledge to her students to see them succeed. With their guidance, Tara has developed her own coaching style that includes teaching technical riding and instilling confidence in her riders. She believes in “riding between the jumps,” which includes all the small details between the jumps, not just the jumps themselves.

Importantly, Tara teaches positivity and encourages her students to understand what they are doing, while performing to the best of their abilities. At the heart of it all, Tara coaches because she loves to see people succeed. She grew up around a group of riders who are now lifelong friends and that is something she actively promotes for her students as well.

In her own riding and training, Tara has applied these methods to find success up to the 1.40m level at venues such as Spruce Meadows, Thunderbird Show Park, HITS Thermal, and Tucson Arizona. She has also had success in developing and training horses with many of the young horses that she has ridden having moved on to be sold and have successful careers, along with her European Grand Prix horse that she sold to the States.

This year, with the arrival of a new mount, Tara is looking forward to getting back to pursuing her own goals, along with helping her students achieve theirs. Going forward, her goals are to get back to competing in the 1.30m and 1.40m classes, and eventually into the International Rings. She has recently acquired a new mare, Prinny, who she hopes will be her partner in the beginning steps of this journey.

Tara is proud to announce that as of 2023, she is a Licensed Coach through Equestrian Canada! According to Equestrian Canada, Licensed Coaches are “coaches with knowledge and expertise achieved through formal education, certification, and validated practical experience., and are actively engaged in equestrian instruction and coaching”. Tara is actively working towards obtaining her Competition Coach - Specialist License, and aims to continue her education through continued participation in clinics aimed towards professional development.

With a continuously growing show team in and around Edmonton, Tara and Overbrook is looking forward to a very exciting 2024 show season at both big name and grass root shows in Canada.

Assistant Coach

A new addition to the Overbrook Team, Daryn joins the team with nearly 20 years of experience. With a “true love” of the basics, Daryn has a keen interest in working on the minute details to help riders develop feel. Her background of experience with a wide range of coaches has allowed her to take tidbits from all of them and bring that to her own students. A horse lover from birth, she understands that partnerships come in all shapes and sizes and finds great fulfillment in helping those partnerships blossom. Having had some very influential and impactful mentors in her own career and life, Daryn hopes that she can now be that for her own students.

With young and developing horses being most of what Daryn has encountered throughout her career, her favourite thing to help her students with is what she calls “the next step.” Her parents were both high level coaches and have passed on the passion for teaching to Daryn. Her own passion for coaching comes from helping her students climb those steps and find the big wins in the small things. With this, her NCCP certification allows her to bring a technical and whole-sport mindset to her coaching.

In her personal riding, Daryn has found success up to the 1.30m level with consistent placings at venues such as Spruce Meadows, Thunderbird Show Park, and Bend Oregon. In her younger years, she had a top three finish in the Children’s FEI with her now retired mare and she hopes to continue pursuing her own goals while helping her students with theirs. Going forward, Daryn hopes to continue climbing up the ranks with her two current competition mares and reach the Grand Prix and FEI level.