United States Eventing Association

Mid-Year Report from the Cal Poly SLO Eventing Team

The Cal Poly SLO Eventing Team was founded in 2018 by Lexie Thacker, other Cal Poly Eventers, and current President Kaley Sapper. The Cal Poly Eventing Team currently has a total of 16 members, a majority of who plan on competing for the team in the coming school year.

We’ve had a busy year! Some fun highlights from the 2019 competition year included the team hosting our first ever team challenge at Twin Rivers, competing in multiple team challenges throughout the season, seeing some of our teammates chase down their FEI dreams at Rebecca Farm, and becoming closer as a team this fall. We saw multiple team members compete successfully at their first FEI competition, move up to Preliminary, and gain confidence with new equine partners. The current team is beyond excited to make new memories and have highlights like those of their own in 2020.

So far this year we have had members compete at various shows, such as Area VI Championships at the Fresno County Horse Park, Twin Rivers Ranch, Rebecca Farm, and Galway Downs. During some of these shows, the team is able to get together and watch the live stream of the event, cheering on fellow teammates and eventers! Activities like this have been able to bring our team closer together in a fun and relaxed way.

At the team meetings, Cal Poly quarter mark stencils have been made for the upcoming competition year, and we have planned trail rides, other team outings, and social events. Everyone on the team is looking forward to representing Cal Poly Eventing Team at the different Intercollegiate Challenges! The team plans to host challenges at Twin Rivers Ranch both in February and April and compete at many others.

While at these shows, the team will be sporting various items from wonderful companies that we’ve partnered with this year: Fleeceworks, Samshield, FITS, Professional's Choice, and DecoPony! Everyone on the team is extremely grateful toward these companies for the support they provide us and we cannot wait to start the 2020 season with them by our side. The team is currently in the process of planning multiple social activities as well as fundraisers, with the goal of being able to purchase more team apparel, team challenge prizes, and offset member expenses.

Our team's drive is one thing that contributes toward our team's uniqueness. While everyone on the team is a very focused athlete and competitor, the team is also very committed to their academics. The team has a wide variety of majors, including business/accounting, animal science pre-veterinary track, and biomedical engineering. Every member attends an extremely academically rigorous institution and is able to successfully balance their riding and academic lives, not an easy task! Our President, Kaley, is preparing for an amazing internship where she will be working on pacemakers. She plans to continue riding and representing Cal Poly Eventing during her internship. One of our founding ideals was to promote and support collegians pursuing both a higher education and their riding goals, so it’s extremely rewarding to see members succeed in their double lives!

Our team has multiple collective goals as well as individual goals for the upcoming season. As a team, we would love to win team challenges as well as host an extraordinary team challenge this season. We’re trying to promote camaraderie, friendship, and sportsmanship of our own team as well as for West Coast intercollegiate eventing. We’re focusing on developing and growing our own program, but we’d love to see more programs blossom in the west. For our individual members, goals include moving up the levels, chasing down young rider dreams, and rehabbing their horses back to their previous level. With unconditional support from the team, these goals don’t seem too far away! Everyone on the team is happy to be here and can’t wait to cheer on Cal Poly at future events! Go Mustangs!

About the USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Program

The USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Program was established in 2014 to provide a framework within which eventing teams and individual competitors could flourish at universities and colleges across the country. The USEA offers a discount of $25 on annual USEA memberships for current students of universities and colleges registered as Affiliates with the USEA and many events across the country now offer Intercollegiate Team Challenges throughout the year, where collegiate eventers can compete individually as well as on teams with their fellow students.

In Intercollegiate Team Challenges, each rider’s score is multiplied by a coefficient appropriate for their level to account for differences in level difficulty and then the individual scores are added together to determine the team score. Only the best three individual scores will count towards the team score, so teams of four will have one “drop” score. Click here to learn more about the USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Program.

The USEA wants to feature your collegiate eventing team in our Intercollegiate Eventing Spotlight series! Please send your story and photos to Claire Kelley at [email protected] to be featured.