How Our Family Got Involved With the National Ability Center | Tricia P.

The National Ability Center didn't become a Phillips-family thing all at once. It happened the way most good things happen in a small mountain town — slowly, by way of one person dragging another in, and then that person dragging in the next.

I started volunteering at the NAC equestrian program in 2010. Mark followed me into it about three years later, by way of a golf tournament. Maddie has been sidewalking on weekends since she was twelve. Jax filmed the program for a school project and ended up with a short film he still puts in his reel. If you live in Park City and you have kids, this is the institution I would want you to know about. So here's the family arc.

horse therapy program — I started volunteering at NAC the year Maddie started kindergarten. Tuesday mornings, like clockwork.

How I got there first

Equestrian background from Nashville, friend from Notre Dame whose kid rode at a similar adaptive program back east, a Tuesday morning in May 2010 at the Quinney campus. I've written a longer post about the volunteer experience itself, so I won't repeat all of it here — but the short version is that I went once and never figured out how to leave.

equestrian therapy — Mark does the annual fundraiser tournament. Jax filmed their last donor video.

Mark and the golf tournament

Mark works in real estate development — he was one of the team that helped develop Promontory, where we live now — so the NAC's Red, White & Snow and the summer golf tournaments were already on his radar professionally. The annual NAC golf tournament has been hosted at the Promontory Pete Dye and Nicklaus courses for years, and Mark started playing in it about a decade ago.

What started as a work-tournament eventually became something else. The format includes NAC athletes paired with players, and Mark — who had been politely supportive of my volunteering but had not been in it — came home from his first tournament a different person. He'd been paired with a Paralympic ski racer who had also recently gotten into golf with an adaptive cart. They tied for second. Mark talks about that round the way he talks about the year Notre Dame beat Florida State.

He now serves on a development committee for the NAC and helps with annual giving. He's the one in our house who can quote the operating budget; I'm the one who knows the horses by name.

horse barn evening — NAC's main barn at sunset. The most peaceful 200 yards in Park City.

Maddie the sidewalker

Maddie is fifteen now, a freshman. She started coming to the barn with me when she was about ten — first as a tag-along, then as a barn helper. Last year she finished her sidewalker certification, and she now volunteers most Saturday mornings during the school year.

She is, frankly, better at it than I was at her age. Teenagers turn out to be excellent sidewalkers — they're un-self-conscious in a way adults aren't, they make eye contact, and they don't over-coach. Maddie has her own riders she sees week-over-week, and watching her remember a rider's specific cue from session to session is something I file under "things that justify the entire parenting project."

Jax with a camera

Jax is a senior, headed into film school, and he's been making short films since middle school. Two years ago he made a six-minute documentary on the NAC equestrian program for a class project. He spent a full eight-week session shooting in the indoor arena, the barn, the office. The film is quiet and patient and lets the riders speak. The NAC has used clips from it in fundraising materials, with his permission.

He'll tell you he's not a "volunteer" the way Maddie and I are. But the film exists, and it's helping the program. Different families show up differently.

teen filming with drone — Jax's NAC drone footage is in his college portfolio. Started as a Saturday volunteer favor.

Why this matters for Park City families

Park City has a strong nonprofit ecosystem — the school district foundation, Live PC Give PC, the youth sports orgs. The NAC sits in a category of its own because it's both local (founded here in 1985, our biggest disability-services nonprofit) and national (athletes come from all over the country to train here, especially in winter).

If you're new to town, here's my pitch:

It's a place where every member of your family can find a role. Kids as young as twelve can sidewalk with parent supervision. Adults can do equestrian, ski school, cycling, fundraising, governance, photography, anything.
The volunteer commitment is real but reasonable. One morning a week for an 8-week session is the standard ask.
The community you build is intergenerational — Maddie's NAC friendships span ages 11 to 70.
It is the single best antidote I know to the version of Park City that is just hot tubs and Range Rovers.

The family-volunteer ethos

Mark and I were both raised in families that volunteered — his at the Catholic parish, mine through my grandmother's church in West Nashville. Neither of us had a plan for how to translate that to mountain-town life when we moved. The NAC ended up being the answer for us, and I think it's because the program is structured in a way that requires showing up. You can't dabble in being a sidewalker. The rider needs you on Saturday at 9.

That structure has done something for our kids that I could not have engineered on purpose. Maddie has built a work ethic around it. Jax has a body of work because of it. Mark has a community outside our neighborhood. And I have a Saturday morning that is mine.

If you're a Park City family — full-time, part-time, just-arrived — and you've been waiting for the right thing to plug into, the NAC is it. Walk into the Quinney Welcome Center. Tell them Tricia sent you. They will absolutely not know who I am, but they will be delighted you came.