Gamecocks improve to 2-0
For the second straight week, South Carolina equestrian's Hunt Seat team dominated its opponent en route to convincing wins.
This week, the victim was TCU, which got into an early hole and never recovered in a 14-6 loss.
The win puts the Gamecocks at 2-0. The Horned Frogs have dropped to 0-2. USC head coach Boo Major was pleased with the win, but said there were some miscues.
"There were some things that happened Friday that we expected and some we didn't," Major said. "Our Hunt Seat team played well again today, but we made a few mistakes, particularly in Western, that we were fortunately able to overcome. I was disappointed with the mental errors that occurred but pleased that we were able to win. We could've played a lot better."
The area that has made very little mistakes early on in the season is the Hunt Seat team, which won its matchup 9-1. Over the first two weeks of the season, the Hunt Seat riders have won by a combined 18-2 score. Major has been happy with the effort so far.
"This Hunt Seat team is determined to win," Major said. "The addition of the freshmen has made us better. It gives us some depth and makes everyone on the team stronger. We are on the right track, and hopefully we keep playing well."
Speaking of those freshmen contributors, Katherine Schmidt followed up a 2-for-2 performance last week with another win against TCU. In addition, redshirt freshman Amber Henter earned one of the MVP awards with her 90-68 throttling of the Horned Frogs' Callie Selchau. Other highlights of the Hunt Seat matchups were junior Kimberly McCormack winning both her rides and Kelsey Hart claiming MVP with her event high score of 86 in Equitation.
"We are extremely excited about the play of our freshmen," Major said. "Someone told me that our freshmen were 10-2 so far this season. These kids have jumped right in to competition and won. Schmidt made some mistakes and was still able to win. The great thing about it is that they're just going to get better."
In the Western competition, the Gamecocks and Horned Frogs played to a 5-5 draw, but TCU won the tiebreaker by a raw score of 698-583.5. In Horsemanship, USC edged the Frogs 3-2. Another freshman, Sam Chiodo, won an MVP with an event-high 77.5. Johnna Letchworth and Alison Ceresani also won their rides. Carolina lost in Reining 3-2 as there were critical mistakes made down the stretch.
"We have to get a little bit stronger mentally," Major said. "We had a ride go off pattern, and it came back on us. However, the mistakes we made are easily correctable, and I'm not too concerned with our Western team."
The Gamecocks now will be on the road for three weeks in a row, starting Friday at Auburn. Major hopes the team members can use these first two meets to help them in the coming weeks.
"We got a lot of cobwebs out," said Major. "We made some mistakes that you can't make on the road, so hopefully we can learn from this match. We have to think on our feet since we will be using unfamiliar horses. I think this team is capable of doing it."