Away from home, team must acclimate itself to unfamiliar horses
The South Carolina equestrian team will travel to Texas this weekend to compete against Texas A&M, Baylor and Delaware State, but being on the road means biggest obstacle in the ring is right underneath it.
When the Gamecocks travel, they don’t bring their own horses. They don’t even bring the saddles they’re familiar with. The only things they’ve used before arriving to the competition are their competition uniforms.
College equestrian teams are characterized by what is call “catch riding,” in which both the home team and visitors don’t know which horse they’ll be competing on until four minutes before they enter the competition ring.
That means the riders have four minutes to familiarize themselves with a 1,000-pound animal with a mind of its own before asking it to jump over a 3-foot fence.
“They can’t fix everything in four minutes, so they have to decide what can I fix and what can I hide,” coach Boo Major said.
Major believes the ability to get comfortable with a horse quickly usually takes a semester or sometimes even a year, so with a team that has 26 freshmen and sophomores, a lot is depending on how quickly the younger members can adjust.
“When you’re competing in high school, you’re riding your own horse, so you know that horse, you compete that horse, you do everything with that horse,” Major said. “When you go into a competition arena, you pretty much know what that horse is going to give you.
The Gamecocks will face three separate competitions this weekend. On Friday they’ll compete at Texas A&M then drive to Waco, Texas, on Saturday, where they’ll compete on neutral territory against Delaware State. On Sunday they’ll wrap up the weekend against Baylor.
Carolina will travel with 24 girls this weekend, which is much higher than the normal team size on the road.
“We want to get experience for some of our younger kids in some of these competitions, so we decided to take as many as we felt comfortable taking and competing,” Major said.
Major said most of the girls will not compete all three days, but the consecutive days of competition will serve as good practice for the end of the season.
“When we go to championships, we have to have three or four tests memorized and think ahead of time,” Major said. “This is actually very similar, so it’s actually a really good prep for when we have to go to the championships.”