Team looking to avoid 0-3 start in SEC play
After a narrow 10-9 loss at Texas A&M two weeks ago, the South Carolina equestrian team gathered when they got back to Columbia to “hash it out” before everyone went home, coach Boo Major said.
The women on the team did most of the talking, and they came to one conclusion: They were better than what they had showed over the past couple of meets.
Major said that the match against the Aggies got away from the team before they even realized what had happened.
Considerable mistakes in the beginning of the meet against Texas A&M in one of the team’s strongest areas, equitation over fences, stunned the team, and they could not recover.
The loss dropped the Gamecocks to 4-2 on the season and, more importantly, 0-2 in the SEC. Things won’t get any easier for the team this weekend, as they travel to play Auburn on Saturday.
South Carolina has had an extra week to prepare for the Tigers and an opportunity to put the last two meets behind them and fix their mistakes.
Major said the coaching staff asked the players to tell them if there was a certain area of their game they needed to focus on in practice and give any suggestions they had on what to do differently.
The response from the players, Major said, was to focus on helping each other out with a little more intensity than what the team had done before.
“I’m real happy with where we are,” Major said. “(But) Auburn is a very difficult team, and they’re even more difficult to beat at home. So this is certainly not going to be a cakewalk.”
Despite the two losses to open up league play, junior Katherine Schmidt and senior Johnna Letchworth were named SEC riders of the month. Schmidt earned the honor for her play in equitation over fences, while Letchworth took the honor for reining.
What stood out about Letchworth’s honor is that this is the first season that she has participated in reining. She had been primarily a horsemanship rider her first few years on campus.
“You look at it and think, wow, she should have been competing in reining all along because she’s quite good,” Major said.
Schmidt said she didn’t expect the award, but was excited about the honor.
She also said that the team did extra practice and rode different horses while giving each other feedback, something she said should help the team’s morale this weekend.
“After the loss, we were kind of down and didn’t know what to do, so the meetings kind of brought us together,” Schmidt said. “There’s a better feeling of togetherness than there was at A&M.”
The team’s morale may have taken a hit, but Schmidt said that doesn’t mean the team is no longer as confident as it was when things were going well earlier in the season. They know their biggest obstacle is themselves.
“The losses aren’t representative of how much talent we have on this team,” Schmidt said. “It’s just that we had some bad luck and made a few mistakes, but it doesn’t take away from our talent. I think we’re still a great team.”
Major said it was a lack of focus that led to the mistakes.
“In my opinion, it didn’t have anything to do with the competition,” he said. “It had more to do with us losing focus and not having confidence when things weren’t going well.”
The meet against Auburn will be the Gamecocks’ last SEC matchup until the spring portion of the schedule. Major said the team recognizes the importance of the match and that a win would be huge.
“I don’t want to be 0-3 going into the spring,” Schmidt said.