The equestrian team concluded its most successful season by taking 10th place out of 16 schools at the IHSA Nationals competition last week in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This season, the Big Green won both its regional and Zone competitions to qualify for the national horse show for the first time in program history.
“We had a super strong year, so I knew that we had talent and strength and ability,” head coach Sally Batton said. “But you have that luck of the draw of the horse, you haven’t ridden the horse. You get on, so that thrown in there adds a little bit of uncertainty.”
Though Dartmouth has previously sent 10 individual qualifiers to Nationals, it had never qualified a team delegation.
In her first season at Dartmouth, Meaghan Haugh ’17 took fourth place in novice fences, the best Big Green finish of the weekend. Haugh, who has ridden since she was 5 years old, rarely rode while at boarding school before Dartmouth, allowing her to compete as a novice.
Haugh suffered a serious sprained foot that left her in a walking boot, but she insisted she would not let the setback affect her riding.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said. “It was quite entertaining having me limp to the awards ceremony.”
Lindsay Seewald ’16 finished sixth in intermediate fences. Meg Rauner ’17 finished eighth in walk-trot-canter.
Anna Knowles ’16 finished second in the Theresa McDonald Horsemanship Challenge, a two part competition that tested riders on their knowledge of horse care and stable maintenance. The majority of the Dartmouth team took the initial written test in February, and Knowles was selected as one of the top two in the Zone to compete at Nationals in the Practicum. This final event was a hands-on demonstration of similar skills, and Knowles’ performance earned her the title of reserve champion.
The team also collected a pair of academic awards – Janna Wandzilak ’14 won an IHSA Senior Academic Achievement Award, and Justin Maffett ’16 won an Intercollegiate Equestrian Foundation Scholarship Award.
The national competition pitted the best 16 of 411 ICSA members against each other.
“The schools we were competing against, their equestrian team is their football team, that’s how much emphasis and funding are put into these teams,” Haugh said. “They go to Nationals every year, and everybody knows them.”
The Big Green arrived in Harrisburg on Tuesday for the competition that lasted until Saturday, often spending 12 hours at the showgrounds, Batton said. The team arrived at 6 a.m. to observe the horses schooling and glean whatever information they could about horses they had never rode.
“You don’t get any warm up,” Haugh said. “You just get on the horse and you go in the ring and you’re judged. Any notes or info you can get is extremely valuable.”
The riders attempted to observe both the course and the qualities of the individual horses such as their stride length and jumping ability, Wandzilak said.
The nearly week-long event forced riders to manage schoolwork through the peak of midterm season. Some turned in work early while others took exams at the competition. On Tuesday, Wandzilak spent a late night preparing a draft of her thesis.
Haugh recalled the Stanford University coach taking a picture of her and a teammate studying, saying, “I’m sending this to your coach because you are the only team that studies besides us.”
The team saw unprecedented success throughout the season, winning five events in the fall before taking victories in the regional, Zone and Ivy competitions in the spring. The team exceeded expectations at the meet.
“After the first show, we couldn’t believe that we’d even won one show,” Wandzilak said. “I don’t think our coach really expected it either, and it just kept going.”
The Big Green was aided at Nationals by a combination of veteran experience and new athletes with three returning riders and three riders who were new to the team.
“I just can’t even really believe it happened,” Wandzilak said. “It’s such a fun idea to think that we’ll always be the first team in Dartmouth history to go to nationals.”
