At various times throughout the year KTTC honors an outstanding member with the Member of the Month Award. This honor goes to a member of the organization who has performed distinguished work in the field of Thoroughbred racing. The honoree receives a commemorative plaque from KTTC and is archived on the KTTC web site as an example of racing's talented young fans.

KTTC Member of the Month March 2002

KTTC is proud to honor member Emily Hufford as Member of the Month!

Emily Hufford is owner/operator of one of the top horseracing simulation games on the Internet at http://homepage.mac.com/secretsilence/sim/index.html. She has been running it for nearly five years and has around 100 players, ages 8-52, involved at any one time.

For those who are unfamiliar with simulation games it's a lot like owning and racing your own stable of horses–you breed them, name/raise the foals, stand stallions at farms built with money you earned in the game. As in real life owners have to pay board, trainers have "hot" streaks and tragedy sometimes occurs. In Hufford's version players begin with $30,000 to buy horses and race them. Some players have built "empires" with, in extreme cases, 800 horses and $70 million, but that's really rare.

There are 10 different racing circuits from California to South America; a 2-year-old circuit and a claiming circuit. There are 13 weeks to a "year" to speed up the action. A computer does most of the work according to a formula that determines how the races are run. Horses are rated as speed horses, stalkers or closers, and adding or removing equipment can affect the outcomes of the races.
"It's a lot of fun and just about everybody has a good time," says Hufford. And it's all due to the continued efforts of KTTC's Member of the Month Emily Hufford.

To see previous KTTC Members of the Month visit the Archives22