Collegiate Eventing Comes of Age

College-age eventers all across the country are taking advantage of the newly created Intercollegiate Eventing Program.

- Kim F. Miller

Continuing their sport in college has been relatively easy for hunt seat, dressage and Western riders for many years. Close to 400 colleges offer Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association teams, 42 colleges and universities participate in the Interscholastic Dressage Association and 21 institutions have athletic-department-funded varsity hunt seat and/ or Western teams. All together, there are plentiful opportunities for riders in those disciplines. Eventers, not so much.

Clemson University in South Carolina, Otterbein University in Ohio and the University of California Davis are among a handful of schools that have had eventing teams for many years. Yet, with the exception of the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, squads in most of the country have had few, if any, teams to square off against.

Happily, that’s changing. In 2014, the U.S. Eventing Association launched the Intercollegiate Eventing Program. In its first full year, the IEP had 21 schools involved and it now counts approximately 40. USEA CEO Rob Burk is an Otterbein graduate himself and had long believed eventers deserved a way to continue the sport through college and to represent their schools doing so.

The team appeal is strong. As University of Georgia captain Emily Cox says, “Growing up riding, the thing I didn’t like about it was that it was not a team sport like my brother had as a soccer player. When I heard about Georgia having an eventing team, I wanted to be part of that.” She was an important part of the team at the inaugural USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Team Championship last May, riding FR’s Check It Out, as one of three Training-level Bulldogs contributing to UGA’s razor-thin win over Clemson.