02/08/2026
2 weeks ago, on Jan 24th, we hosted our Annual Huntoon Stables Holly Banquet at the Doubletree Hilton Lisle!! We shared the evening with 109 guests who helped us celebrate a great evening and an excellent recap of our 2025 events! The night was full of family, friends and great food and fun! We had almost 70 items on our raffle tables that included a little bit of something for everybody from riders to parents to siblings and more! Our “2025- A Year in Review Video” played in the background all of the way thru dinner, giving us a chance to look back at almost 1000 pictures of so many fun memories from last year. We ran our “Looking Back Together” Presentation which recapped our 2025 events a bit more, honored our high point winners from 2025, gave out awards for our riders who rode in their first in barn “Stable Shows”, voted for our Horse of The Year (it was ROY of course) honored our riders, helpers, friends and family that help us and work so hard through the year to keep things fun and functioning and so much more from last year… and we closed out the night with our tradition of a great group pic, the “Garth Circle” and then danced the rest of the night away!! Food was buffet style which gave everyone a good chance to mingle some more and the food WAS DELICIOUS as always!! Our rider parents are included as well with our parent raffle and they get to socialize, dine and mingle through the evening! Our riders are seated together and our parents are seated together so everyone can enjoy their own “crowd” and have the best time socializing w/ friends!
And if that wasn’t enough we paused to celebrate a HUGELY IMPORTANT milestone, Melindas 60th Year of teaching!!! Melinda shared a great moment with all of us when she came up to share some memories and recap her thanks for being able to do (and keep doing) what she has always had such a deep passion for! We had a brief video to take a look back at the many many riders she has instructed & some great pics and memories of the horses she has shown over the years as well. So many thanks to those who helped us make this a special night for Melinda and an extra thank you to Brendan Heintz for digging thru his extensive vault of history and photos to help us find some truly great shots of Melinda from years past!!
We could not have asked for a more fun night!!! Can’t wait for next year!!
