After wrapping up its best season in history last spring with a 10th-place finish at the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Championship, Dartmouth equestrian looks forward to starting its 2014-15 campaign this weekend. The team is rushing into the new season with two shows, one Saturday at the University of Vermont and a second Sunday at Middlebury College.
But team leaders note the changed face of the fall riding squad.
“We lost a lot of good seniors last year, and we have a lot of good people who are on off-terms,” co-captain Alexa Dixon ’15 said. “It’s hard to keep up the quality that we had last year, but I think we’ve done it by getting really good new members during tryouts.”
Although it is a varsity sport, the team does not recruit due to competition organization. At every show, teams need a rider in all levels from walk-trot beginners to experienced showers in open fences, so it is not in the team’s best interest to try to bring experienced riders to Dartmouth.
“I had been keeping track of a few that I knew were coming, and I knew about their riding experience, but we have some that I hadn’t been tracking that were a good addition, too,” head coach Sally Batton said.
This fall, nine of 17 riders — five freshmen, one sophomore, two juniors and one senior — are new to the team. Batton said, however, that the team has not noticed any hiccups in its training.
“They’re really fitting right in, and they’re great team members,” Batton said. “It’s all one team, which I like to see.”
Last year, the team took first in Ivies, Regions and Zones, before taking 10th at Nationals. But before zeroing in on making it to Nationals, the team is focusing on what’s directly ahead.
“First, we just want to focus on having good results at these individual regular season shows so that we’re placed well in the region,” Dixon said.
Last fall, to start off its record-setting season, the team took first place at both of these shows.
“Obviously we did really well there last year, but you never really know until you get there what the other teams are going to look like,” co-captain Emily Tregidgo ’16 said.
Saturday’s show at UNH will allow Batton to evaluate where the team stands in terms of skill, ability to perform under pressure and ability to perform with an unfamiliar horse, as the home team supplies horses and mounts, Tregidgo said.
“You can do a lot of training at home, but you can’t really replicate getting on strange horses that you don’t know and competing against other riders,” Batton said.
To reach Nationals, Dartmouth must first take the top spot in Regionals, a division consisting of 10 to 12 teams, and then first place in Zones, a show of four teams. Dartmouth beat out perennial powerhouse Mount Holyoke College at Zones last spring before surprising with its 10th-place IHSA Championships finish.
Despite the team’s unprecedented success of the 2013-14 season, no one views it as unrepeatable.
“Based on the quality of the team, which I think is equal or better than we had last year, we have a shot,” Dixon said. “But it’s always so hard, and there are so many things that go into it, so it’ll definitely take a lot of hard work.”
