By Jim Charvat
Del Mar Thoroughbred Club CEO Joe Harper joins the 2023 Del Mar intern group in the paddock at the racetrack. From left they are: Noah Kirste, Jadyn Crowe, Laurel White, and Luke Falcetti. © Benoit Photo
It’s that time of year again. Del Mar is open for another summer of exciting Thoroughbred action, the 2-year-olds are about to strut their stuff on the racetrack and the track has assembled another group of aspiring college students who may one day make an impact on the world of horse racing. This year, the popular Intern Program, which over the years has brought 119 young folks to Del Mar, has four bright, enthusiastic individuals.
Let’s meet this year’s class of 2023:
23-year old Jadyn Crowe is one of two interns in this year’s class to hail from the University of Arizona, but unlike 41 interns before her, she did not attend the school’s renown Race Track Industry Program. Instead, Jadyn recently graduated with a business management degree.
“I’m just trying to figure everything out,” she says. “I thought this would be a really fun place to work in the meantime before I look for a career.”
Jadyn grew up in San Diego and currently resides in Point Loma.
“I used to ride English when I was little,” she says. “I spent a lot of time with horses so I always thought it would be cool to work around them.”
The first time Jadyn came to the races was three or four years ago when she visited Del Mar with some of her friends.
“Just seeing all the flowers and everybody so dressed up it was really cool to experience,” she says, “and then how fast the horses go and all the excitement.”
Jadyn grew up in La Mesa before her family moved to Coronado her senior year in high school. Then it was off to Arizona where she says she mainly concentrated on the business clubs on campus. Her brush with horse racing came through a classmate’s uncle who ran horses at Rillito Park in Tucson.
“I would love to learn the inside operations here at Del Mar,” she says when asked what she hopes to get out of the experience this summer. “How everything is organized, what goes into getting this place ready for racing. There’s a lot that goes into it and I find that super interesting.”
“I don’t have a lot of experience in any corporate type of job so I think this is a great little taste of what a real corporation or business might be,” she notes. “I would love working in HR or marketing but I’m happy to go where I’m needed.”
Like her fellow interns, Jadyn will be shadowing different department heads through their daily routines, be it checking out the jocks room one day, the pari-mutual room the next, and even spending some time with the stewards.
Noah Kirste is currently a senior at Southern Utah. He grew up in Las Vegas and while he may have dabbled a bit in horse racing, it was Del Mar…the place, that attracted him to the Intern Program.
“It’s a unique place that separates itself from a lot of places within the country or even the world,” Noah says. “When I was here last year with my stepfather I met a lot of people and they were all very nice and intriguing and it looks like they have a really strong team here.”
His stepdad works for Caesars, sponsor of the Del Mar Derby, among others. He remembers his first impression of the seaside oval.
“Just seeing how big this place was,” he says. “You see horseracing on TV and it looks small but once you step into this arena, it’s massive.”
He feels a certain kinship to the horses.
“Growing up in Utah you do visit farms and I have ridden horses so I feel attached to them,” he offers. “They’re such beautiful creatures and they’re another reason for my being here.”
Noah says he’s hoping to experience all facets of the racing industry.
“From the betting side to the marketing to operations,” he says. “I’m hoping this internship will help me decide what I want to do with my future.”
“I’ve gotten into horseracing the past year or two so I’m fairly new to this industry,” Noah says. “I’ve watched Churchill. I’ve watched the Breeders’ Cup and the Kentucky Derby. Being a marketing major I’m hoping to see how the racetrack operates.”
Noah graduates in December.
Laurel White is the other intern attending the University of Arizona. She’s a junior majoring in marketing with a minor in history. Like her fellow Wildcat, she, too, is in the process of narrowing down what she wants to do as a career.
“Sports marketing is something I’m interested in,” she says. “This internship came up and I decided to go with it to kind of see what I like and what I don’t like. I’m just looking forward to seeing what piques my interests.”
While she’d never been to Del Mar, she has been to the races. She took in the sights and sounds of Keeneland in Lexington last year.
“It was my first racetrack experience and it was very cool,” Laurel says. “I imagine it will probably be a little bit different here because of the different parts of the country.”
One of her goals with the Intern Program is to make some good connections and network with the people who work here at Del Mar.
“I’m just going to take the summer as it goes,” she says. “From my limited experience I think this is a really cool environment but I just don’t know that much about it so I’ll see after the summer if I want to continue to pursue a career in the horse racing industry.”
Luke Falcetti is attending college in upstate New York at Syracuse University where he’s majoring in Sports Analytics. Luke’s family lives in Orange County but he chose Syracuse because it was one of three schools in the country that offer his major.
“When I came out of high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I knew I liked sports and I was good at math. So I was looking around and found that major and that’s why I chose Syracuse.”
He says he’s loved horse racing for as long as he can remember and has been coming to Del Mar his whole life.
“My grandparents brought me here as a kid,” Luke says. “I thought this would be a fun opportunity to come here and learn everything from the inside.”
His first memory of Del Mar was Pacific Classic Day 2012. “I came with my parents,” he says noting that was the year Dullahan won the big race. “We’ve gone to every Pacific Classic over the past 10 years so I’m pretty familiar with the winners.”
Unfortunately, he missed last year’s Classic with Flightline because he had to get back to New York for school. But that’s not where he found out about the Intern Program. He says a family friend involved with Del Mar gave him the heads up.
“I’m sort of using it as a window into how I can get involved in horse racing,” Luke says. “I have aspirations, a little bit, I just don’t know what it would be or what I would do. I’ve been doing analytic stuff at school so maybe in some form there.”
We all know how analytics have permeated other sports like baseball and football.
“There definitely is some in horse racing,” he says, “but from what I’ve seen the other sports are much more involved. Like in baseball you have 20 different stats you can look at for each player. You can pinpoint an expected batting average for a player in a certain matchup against a certain pitcher. It’s all about the matchups which you don’t see in racing as much.”
Which makes one wonder, if they ever come up with an analytic that will reveal the winner of a horse race, that person, maybe Luke, will make a fortune.