If you want to make a bet, place it on Brite Star Aggie, a foal born and bred at Chicago High School for the Agricultural Sciences. Brite Star Aggie qualified last week to race at Hawthorne Racecourse in Stickney. The trotter will join the other three-year-olds for the 2016 harness racing season.
“We’re not sure when she’ll race,” Chicago Ag principal William Hook said. “To qualify, horses either have to race the track or run with other horses, but she qualified to race this season.”
The Chicago Ag filly was born at the high school in April 2013. Brite Star is the last foal of the high school’s broodmare. She was sired by Ideal Towne.
“We got a free breeding in Kewanee,” Hook said. “The same farmer loaned Vega to the school. We only keep one brood mare on campus at a time.”
Brite Star was raised by students at Chicago Ag, an experimental magnet high school that teaches agricultural sciences to urban students. She was sold to Hosea Williams, who trained the three-year-old and got her qualified at Hawthorne.
The school’s animal science program teaches students the principles in the raising and management of livestock and companion animals, including animal nutrition, physiology, behavior and management. Chicago Ag keeps a variety of companion animals, beef and dairy cattle, swine, sheep, horses and poultry on campus.
Brite Star isn’t the first trotter to be raised at the school. Chi Towne Aggie was sold as a yearling to Dandy Farms Racing, of Glenview, and in 2013, became the first standardbred race horse to ever be born and raised at a U.S. high school.
Chi Towne Aggie is now racing in Mississippi. Hook said Brite Star Aggie is the first horse raised by Chicago Ag students to qualify as a registered trotter in Illinois.
Vega, Brite Star’s mother, has since been returned to Kewanee. The same farm has donated a new broodmare, Basic Browne to the school. Last August, Basic Browne foaled a filly named Emily Strong by Olivia Beazley in honor of her late sister, Emily.
Hook said Emily Strong will be auctioned off this spring at yearling sale downstate. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to Emily Beazley’s Kures for Kids, which supports pediatric cancer research.
Harness racing returned after a ten-year absence to Hawthorne following last year’s closing of Balmoral. The trotters will share digs with thoroughbred racing at Hawthorne Racecourse.
The harness racing season opened at the 125-year-old track at 3501 W. Laramie Ave., Stickney, on Jan. 8. The season will run through September 2016.
Visit the Hawthorne Racecourse website for more information on scheduled harness meets.
Reprinted with permission of the patch.com site