Haley Harrington of Rolling Hills Estates, Calif. was named Arabian Horse Association 2011 Youth of the Year. An outstanding individual with an incredible record of success at just 18, Harrington made her way into the hearts of the Youth of the Year Committee with her ardent involvement with Arabian horses and her unwavering commitment to her school and community.

Harrington has been front and center as a leader for the Arabian Horse Youth Association (AHYA) where she served as Vice President in 2011. While Harrington seems to have a quite demeanor, she is hardly a silent leader and worked diligently to get sport horse under saddle classes added to the Youth Nationals class list in 2011. Harrington’s idea proved to be a good one as the first-ever purebred sport horse under saddle class had enough entries to require elimination rounds.

Harrington’s success in the show ring reflects her love for the hunter and sport horse divisions where she earned two unanimous Championships, one Reserve Championship and three Top Ten’s at the 2011 Youth Nationals in sport horse under saddle, hunter hack, hunter seat equitation and working hunter classes. At the regional level in 2011 Harrington cleaned up with six Championships, three Reserve Championships and three Top Five’s.

Successfully balancing her time at the barn with her time studying, Harrington earned a 4.4 weighted GPA her senior year and broke into a very elite group of students as a College Board appointed AP Scholar when she earned perfect 5’s on all her Advanced Placement (AP) tests. With a passion for writing and literature, Harrington’s poetry has been repeatedly published in the Palos Verdes Peninsula High School literary magazine as well as the poetry anthology, A Celebration of Poets. Needless to say, Harrington is a member of the National Honor Society, but as a testament to her diverse interests, she is also a member of the Science National Honors Society and the History National Honors Society.

Coupled with her success in the classroom, Harrington stays engaged outside the classroom with involvement in several school-related extracurricular activities from Teen Court to Young Democrats, but her passion for animals and people reaches beyond her high school campus.

For several years Harrington has volunteered at the Peter Zippi Fund for Animals providing day-to-day care for animals in the organization’s adoption program, but perhaps most notably founded an organization called Hope. Hope collects discarded school supplies and clothes in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District and redistributes them to educational programs as far away as Africa and Haiti and as close to home as Schools on Wheels and Rainbow Services in southern California.

It is AHA’s honor to present Haley Harrington as the 2011 Youth of the Year-an excellent representative of the exceptional young people who have connected with our exceptional breed, making a difference in our industry and beyond.

AHA is a major equine association serving 33,000 members across North America. It registers and maintains a database of more than one million Arabian, Half-Arabian and Anglo-Arabian horses and administers approximately $3 million in annual prize money. AHA produces championship events, recognizes close to 600 Arabian horse shows and distance rides and provides activities and programs that promote breeding and ownership. For information about Arabian, Half-Arabian and Anglo-Arabian horses, call 303-696-4500, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.ArabianHorses.org