POLSON — They say if you don’t jump, you’ll never know if you can fly.

Monika Frame and Claire Bick, both freshman at Polson High School, have spent most of their young lives jumping, and just recently learned that they could, in fact, soar.

Frame and Bick have competed in equestrian competitions all across the state of Montana for five and seven years, respectively. After consistently placing quite well in the state circuit, they decided to up their game by entering in the Oktoberfest tournament at the famed Spruce Meadows arena in Calgary, Alberta, Canada from Oct. 28 to 31.

“Spruce Meadows is one of the finest show-jumping venues in the world,” their coach Wanda Rosatti said. “It draws riders from all over the world.”

Equestrian is one of only two Olympic competitions in which men and woman, children and adults compete on equal footing. At the tournament, Frame and Bick saw a level of quality in the other competitors that Rosatti compared to a high school football player walking onto the field with the University of Southern California Trojans, or even a rumble with the pros.

Somehow though, both girls returned to Polson with ribbons in hand.

“They went up expecting to enjoy the experience, but not necessarily expecting to place,” Rosatti said. “You can’t go in expecting to win a ribbon, and yet, they found that they handled it really well and their horses handled it really well.”

Not only did the girls compete in the three foot division that they had intended to jump, but they also added an even higher division, 3.3 feet.

“They exceeded their expectation,” Rosatti said.

While both Frame and Bick had been to Spruce Meadows before, those trips were only to watch other people compete, not to compete themselves.

“It was overwhelming,” Bick said. “Way bigger than anything Montana does.”

According to Rossati, the courses were set up differently, they were longer and more technical. The designers at Spruce Meadows know what they’re doing and they know how to ask difficult questions of the horses. “It’s a very technical sport,” she said. “You’re asking the horse to jump something that it can no longer see.”

Horses learn to trust their rider and if the rider thinks they can do it, then they believe they can do it, so they try. Horses can be taught to jump, but it takes a while to build a bond with one and to do well, Rosatti said.

“I thought it was out of my league,” Frame said about the initial shock of the grand arena. “[But, I learned] that we can compete against professionals and still do good.”

Even the horses noticed they were all of a sudden “in the big league.” They were pampered, sacked up in the arena’s luxury stalls with almost constant attention all day long, Bick said.

Since equestrian is an NCAA sport, the girls both hope to eventually earn college scholarships, but it’s tough, they said, because they don’t receive the same support from the school districts that more traditional athletes do. There are a lot of rodeo programs in Montana, but not show jumping, Bick said, citing schools in California or the southeast as possible scholarship opportunities.

As winter approaches, things slow down for both the horses and riders, but they will continue to train as much as the weather allows and pick things up again in the spring. It seems like the girls have caught the travel bug and both want more thrills from big events. They’re looking to attend events in Washington, Oregon or California. The event in California lasts for eight weeks and draws more than 2,500 horses.

“We do not compete officially as a team, but we consider ourselves a team,” Rosatti said. “Most of the girls have been riding together for a long time. We camp together, we stay together, we take care of our horses together.”