The Dartmouth Equestrian team galloped to victory this past Saturday at Morton Riding Farm, finishing first of eight teams.
On Sunday, the Big Green Equestrians turned in another solid effort, finishing third of nine at the University of Vermont show.
At Saturday's show, the Big Green placed five first place riders. The victorious riders were Tim Malone '07 in open fences, John Olsen '05 in novice fences, Katie Colfer '04 in intermediate flat, Sarah Taylor-Smith '06 in novice flat and Abigail Donohue '06 in novice flat.
The victories by Olsen and Smith, in novice fences and novice flat respectively, gave both riders their second individual event victories of the season.
On Sunday, Mitzi Huang '05 won a blue ribbon in the walk-trot.
The walk-trot is the most basic of horse show competitions, but Huang said that she was thrilled to win it. She said that this victory, her first in intercollegiate equestrian competition, had a special meaning to her.
"Last winter term, I broke my leg," she said. "To come back from a very serious injury to winning first place at an event is very indicative of how much my team encouraged me to get back into shape to perform."
"Everytime I went alongside the ring, I saw my teammates cheering me on, and I really appreciated it," she said.
Co-captain Sara Glazer '04 said that she was satisfied with both her and the team's performance over the weekend.
"I think that I did a pretty good job on Saturday," she said. "The only person who scored higher than me in my event was one of the male members of the team, John Olsen. He won the event. So it was nice even though I didn't win to have Dartmouth win the first two places."
Glazer indicated that she was particularly encouraged by the performance of the Equestrian team's new riders.
"I think that we got four really strong new riders for this year," she said. "They definitely contributed a lot of points to our team total this weekend and throughout the season."
She expressed that this past weekend's solid performance is indicative of what is to come from the Big Green riders for the remainder of the fall horse shows.
"Right now we are probably in 2nd place in our region," Glazer said. "Hopefully we'll push into first place so we can send eight riders to Nationals."
The Dartmouth Equestrian team hopes to carry its momentum over into its next show, which will take place on Nov. 9 at the University of New Hampshire.
