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Summer Marketing Intern Brings Back Didericksen Name to Los Alamitos 
Wyatt Didericksen is conducting a summer internship in the marketing department at Los Alamitos Race Course.

© Los Alamitos Race Course
Summer Marketing Intern Brings Back Didericksen Name to Los Alamitos 

LOS ALAMITOS, CA—JUNE 25, 2017—Wyatt Didericksen, whose father, Kip Didericksen, is the 11th all-time leading Quarter Horse jockey at Los Alamitos with 1,318 wins, is conducting a summer internship in the marketing department at Los Alamitos Race Course. Wyatt is a student at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho and is majoring in athletic administration and minoring in coaching.

"Working here at Los Alamitos this summer I think is going to be a great learning experience," he said. "I look forward to the things that I will learn and be able to apply in other sports and parts of life. There are a lot of aspects to an athletic director and Los Alamitos provides a real life look into the challenges of sport, public relations, management, and marketing of a program that will be very useful in the years to come."

Born in 1994 in Boise, Idaho, Wyatt moved with his dad and mom, Stephanie Didericksen, to Cypress, California when he was just a year old when his dad briefly came back out of retirement to return to riding Quarter Horses at Los Alamitos in 1995. The Didericksens returned to Boise, Idaho for good two years later.

"Growing up I played a lot of sports and loved being outdoors," Wyatt said. "If I wasn’t playing with the neighbors I was doing one of two things - hunting with my dad or hanging out with my grandpa."

Wyatt’s grandfather is Dwayne Didericksen, a highly respected, influential, and always active figure in Quarter Horse racing, both with the American Quarter Horse Association and with the Quarter Horse industry in the Intermountain region.

"In middle school I spent the summers working at Wyoming Downs with my grandpa in Evanston, Wyoming," Wyatt added. "I was in charge of cleaning and taking care of the paddock. I met a lot of great people there including (trainers) Bret Vickery and Ron Moosman."

Wyatt attended Eagle High School in the city of Star, Idaho, where he participated in track and cross-country. During his sophomore year at Eagle High, Wyatt began to learn more about the scholarship opportunities available to student athletes. The following summer, Wyatt broke school records in the 1,600 meters, 1,500 meters, 3,200 meters, and was a member of the distance medley relay team school records. "From then on I started to receive attention from colleges and universities. As I got faster bigger schools started to make contact with me," he said.

Wyatt received a scholarship to Boise State University. He would later leave school to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

"I was called to labor in the Accra, Ghana mission. Ghana is on the western shores of Africa and I lived with the people in various areas of the country for two years, and it was an amazing experience."

A coaching change at Boise State led Wyatt to transfer to Idaho State in Pocatello.

"Once I finish school and achieve my master’s degree I would love to become an Athletic Director at the collegiate level. One of the things I learned from the Ghanaian people was that money isn’t everything. I want to work doing something that I can care about and put my best effort forward. Athletic administration was a great fit."

Wyatt’s father, Kip, won 63 stakes races at Los Alamitos including the Champion of Champions in 1990 with World Champion Dash For Speed and 1992 with World Champion Refrigerator. Los Alamitos Race Course annually holds the running of the Didericksen Handicap during the Los Alamitos Equine Sale weekend. At 6 feet tall, a professional riding career was not in the cards for the younger Didericksen.

"I did participate in high school rodeo," he added. "My uncle had a cutting horse that wasn’t being used so with encouragement from my grandparents I decided that I would give cow cutting a shot. My uncle coached me after track practice all spring and by the end of it I won the district title. The next year I got a new horse and she was real fancy, but with me being (my height) and her being relatively short, when she would dance in front of the cows, my feet would drag on the ground."

Wyatt Didericksen might one day return to riding Quarter Horses at rodeos, but for now his focus remain on the track, both for track and field at Idaho State, and his current internship at Los Alamitos Race Course.

Courtesy of www.losalamitos.com.