UNION MILLS, Ind. – Anna Minich has spent her entire childhood on an Indiana dairy farm, but she rode her love for horses to a major college scholarship.

The valedictorian of the class of 2024 at South Central High School is taking her talent for showing horses to the equestrian team at South Dakota State University.  

Minich said she likes cows but gravitated more toward the horses her mother, Kim, always seemed to keep on the family farm.

“I’ve always loved cows and still show them at 4-H, but the horses are definitely my passion for sure,” she said. 

Minich, president of her FFA branch at school the past two years, showed a horse competitively the first time in 4th grade at the La Porte County Fair as a member of 4-H.

She began taking lessons focused more on showing horses in 2020, and purchased her show horse, Kiwi, with help from her parents the following year. Minich and Kiwi went on to earn multiple bronze championships in regional competitions hosted by the American Quarter Horse Association.

Minich accepted a scholarship offer this year to join the equestrian team at the Division 1 land grant college in Brookings, S.D., where she plans on majoring in animal science.

After earning a four-year degree, Minich said she hopes to continue her studies at a school of veterinarian medicine to become an equine veterinarian.

Her father, Luke, believes there’s no stopping his daughter from whatever else she wants to accomplish in the future.

“She’s pretty impressive with the number of things she takes on and the way that she does them,” he said.

Minich said valedictorian was a goal she set for herself a long time ago to gain an edge in being accepted at a major university and to experience what she imagined would be a special feeling from placing at the top of her class.

“I’m very honored to represent my school that way. I worked hard for a long time for that,” she said.

Her short reign, so far, has not been disappointing.

Minich said it’s been even more special because her close friend, Olivia Rocke, is salutatorian of the class and they’ll be representing the school together in activities such as senior awards night and the graduation ceremony.

She said taking care of the four horses at home is her main responsibility before and after school while her younger siblings, William and Calvin, help mostly with milking and feeding the cows.

“My little brothers are definitely more into that than I am. I’m a farm girl. I just have my specialties, we’ll say,” she said.

Her parents own Triple M Dairy, which has about 800 dairy cows about 20 miles south of Lake Michigan. 

Minich said she looks back at her many accomplishments as a youth with pride and is excited about the future, but her voice cracked with emotion about the curtains closing on this chapter of her life. The sun is also setting on her tenth and final year in the 4-H program.

Currently, she’s training another horse to show in her final La Porte County Fair, which begins July 6.

The Minichs have five younger children, including, Kate, a freshman with a chance of becoming valedictorian of her class.

In a way, Luke Minich joked that he feels kind of sorry for the pressure his other children might feel in later years from being compared to their older sister at school and elsewhere out in the community. “She sets a pretty high bar,” he said.