OUR WRANGLERS
Becky VanDamme
Sky Lodge has been a second home to me for most of my life. My family started attending Wesley Free Methodist Church in Waukegan, IL and started coming to camp when I was a very little girl at the age of 6. This is also where I started learning about Jesus and made a decision to follow Him. A short time later, I also discovered the horses at camp. I am not sure when it happened, sometime around the age of 8, the horses had me hooked. I spent many summers attending camps at Sky Lodge and all of my summers in high school were spent on summer staff.
After high school, I earned a degree in stable management from the Kentucky Equine Institute at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. I then began a career in stable management at the Tempel Lipizzan farm in Wadsworth, IL. There I spent 6 years before my husband and I decided to start a family.
My horse career was on the back burner for awhile while my children were growing. After a few years, I was able to start riding again and enjoy being around horses. Then in July of 2012, Sky Lodge hired me to be their horse director and improve their horse program. It has grown by leaps and bounds and God has blessed this ministry in so many ways! And now, my own daughter is being blessed by this and following in my footsteps. In return, I am also blessed by all the horse lovin' little girls who can't wait to come to Cowgirl and Equestrian Camps every summer. It is a privilege to be used by God at Sky Lodge!