United States Eventing Association

“Team Transy” may be one of the smaller rosters in the U.S. Eventing Association’s Intercollegiate Program, but the Lexington, Kentucky–based squad delivers far more than its size suggests. Tucked in the heart of Bluegrass horse country, Transylvania University recognizes eventing as an athletic program, giving its riders the same resources as NCAA athletes—complete with strength and conditioning, access to athletic trainers, and the same academic standards that govern the 25 other NCAA Division III varsity programs on campus. That institutional buy-in, paired with Lexington’s unrivaled equestrian ecosystem, has helped the eight-rider team build an outsized culture of camaraderie, ambition, and care.

At the center of it all is team manager Kelly Shores, who stepped into her role in December 2022. Shores is not a coach—each student trains with their own professional—but the liaison who keeps the gears turning between barns, show grounds, and the university. “My hope is that our students feel like true college athletes,” Shores said. “Eventing is a recognized athletic program here at Transy, and I want them to know they have the same support and recognition as any traditional team.”

Weekly team meetings and workouts anchor the calendar; a dedicated strength coach tailors sessions to each rider’s needs, and the athletic training staff helps with injury prevention and rehab. One rider even credits the trainers with guiding her back from a pre-college foot fracture. “We’re small on purpose,” Shores added. “We’ll cap around 10 riders so we can stay close-knit and also provide funding for each student at every show.”

Shores’s own path made her a natural builder of community. Originally from Massachusetts, she spent childhood trips in nearby Paris, Kentucky, where her extended family owns a Thoroughbred nursery. An abandoned mare pulled from a field became her first horse and the start of a lifelong obsession. She competed locally, captained her IHSA team at Endicott College—“that experience taught me I might love organizing and supporting the team even more than competing,” she said—and later graduated from the University of Kentucky with a Hospitality and Tourism Management degree focused on the equine industry.

Her favorite days now are the ones when the team converges at their de facto home base, the Kentucky Horse Park. “While my students are eventers at heart, they loved experiencing other disciplines and events,” she said, naming programs such as the Retired Racehorse Project to the Maclay Finals. This spring, she organized “Camp Cathy,” a day with noted Lexington eventer Cathy Wieschhoff that mixed flatwork, show jumping, cross-country schooling, and groundwork. The team even directed service hours toward the American Saddlebred Legacy Foundation, helping evaluate rescue horses, photographing them for placements, and giving them a little polish and attention.

The riders’ individual stories are as varied as the barns where they board—most at Harleigh Heights with Bennett Adkins, others with Sidney Alyse Sporthorses or Allie Knowles at Valley View.

Sophomore Hayden Drager grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Area X’s vast geography meant precious few recognized events. Determined to plant herself in “the heart of eventing,” Drager first came east as a working student for Olympian Liz Halliday—an experience she described as one of the most incredible of her life, saying she was grateful for every single day she spent there—and eventually found Transy.

She currently competes Winnsome (ES Wild Dance x MS Merlot), a versatile 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding owned by her mother, Shannon Drager. “My mom produced him from the beginning and competed him up through Intermediate—he had just gone Intermediate at the American Eventing Championships,” Drager said. “This past year I didn’t have a horse, so we decided I’d take a turn. He arrived four weeks before the Intercollegiate Championships, we ran Novice at the Kentucky Horse Park, went to Championships at Novice, then moved up to Training and placed third before my mom took him back.” The mother-daughter sharing arrangement has made her appreciate the horse’s generous brain even more. “With my mom he got so amped to go do the job, and with me he kind of told me, ‘OK kid, listen up. Let’s do the job.’ ”

Drager rides with Sidney Baughman and studies molecular and cellular biology on a pre-med track. She said the team’s structure—independent training programs paired with weekly team touchpoints—was a huge draw. “Even though we aren’t all at the same barn, we still do activities together a lot,” she said. “It gives us a big community feel. And Transy helps us pursue eventing in a way that feels different than most schools.”

She also loved the USEA Intercollegiate Championships, which the team approached last spring with a freshman-heavy roster. “It was the first time I’d had a team experience since Pony Club Championships,” she said. “We decorated stalls, did the parade of teams—luckily ‘Transylvania’ comes late in the alphabet, so we watched how everyone else did it first.”

Sophomore Olivia Normandin, a Louisville native who spent high school at Maryland’s Garrison Forest School riding hunters, echoes that sense of belonging. “Because we are recognized as a team, we sit in on meetings alongside other sports, and it makes us feel included,” she said. “You’ll sit next to a swimmer or a lacrosse player and suddenly you have friends showing up to cheer at the Horse Park.”

Normandin competes Discreetly Thrifty (Super Saver x Discreet Meating) an off-the-track Thoroughbred she sourced as a slight, scrappy 4-year-old. Together with trainer Allie Knowles, she brought “Theo” along from the ground up. “Allie knew what Theo was thinking before Theo knew what he was thinking,” Normandin said with a laugh. “Watching her ride him is incredible.” Their program has been so successful that Knowles will pilot Theo at the USEA Young Event Horse East Coast Championships this fall in Elkton, Maryland, while Normandin eyes a move-up to Training. “He’s little—maybe 15.3 and narrow as a board—but he’s got so much try,” Normandin said. “There was no better feeling than cross-country on a Thoroughbred.”

The team’s lone pony on the roster belongs to sophomore Rory Parks, who grew up in rural Alabama dreaming of eventing but with few local options. Parks’ Whiskey Foxtrot Tango—a rescue mare who still carries scars from past rough handling—only started eventing in February and surged from Starter to Novice in a matter of months. “Cross-country is definitely her favorite,” Parks said of the little Appendix Quarter Horse mare. “She just became so brave and strong.” Whiskey made her Novice debut at the Kentucky Classique, delivering a double-clear cross-country and capping a summer of confidence building.

Parks, who trains with Morgan Houberg, balances biochemistry and business coursework on a pre-vet path with hands-on industry work at Keeneland and other tracks—training young racehorses, galloping, and managing daily care. “When I got here it felt amazing because in Alabama there’s almost no eventing,” she said. “At the Horse Park and Masterson Station, everyone did what I did.”

For all three sophomores, Transy’s athlete support has been a through-line: team lifts and runs alongside other sports; customized programs for lower-leg strength or returning-to-ride rehab; and an athletic department culture that shows up on the rail and in the barn aisle. Normandin laughed about a swimmer who appointed himself their “senior captain,” turning up at competitions to cheer even though he “didn’t really know what he was watching.” Parks compared the vibe at Intercollegiate Championships to Pony Club on a bigger stage. “People you’d never met were cheering you on after a bobble,” she said. “You can’t beat the eventing community.”

Shores has her own favorite Championships memory from this spring, when Transy fielded two full teams. “It was incredible,” she said. “It’s like Christmas for us—emotional, full of growth, and a highlight of the program every year.” With two squads to keep organized, the logistics were intense. “I was very lucky my girls gifted me an electric bike so I didn’t have to miss a ride,” she said. That kind of gesture sums up Team Transy’s ethic: small, scrappy, and deeply invested in one another’s success.

The location doesn’t hurt either. The Kentucky Horse Park is minutes away; world-class clinicians are a short haul; and the calendar overflows with recognized events, schooling shows, and cross-discipline opportunities that widen the students’ horsemanship. The team’s service days—like volunteering with the American Saddlebred Legacy Foundation—stretch the riders beyond their own show schedules. Fundraising, too, has become a team-building exercise: a Day of Giving campaign that set a $300 target ballooned to nearly $1,500, which the riders promptly poured into “Camp Cathy.”

And while results matter—Theo’s YEH bid, Whiskey’s Novice debut, Winnsome’s seamless handoff between riders and a mother’s Intermediate AEC run—the students talk just as much about what the program is teaching them: how to craft a personalized training plan with a pro, how to strength-train like an athlete, how to take care of each other on grueling weekends. “The freedom to design a program that worked for them while still having a team to come home to was my favorite part of intercollegiate,” Shores said. “They didn’t have to be confined to a specific box.”

As the new season unfolds, Drager looks forward to solidifying her partnership with Winnsome while chasing more team outings. Normandin plans to savor the YEH experience with Knowles in the irons and then tackle Training herself. Parks is aiming for long-format Novice three-day this fall, with a Training move-up on the horizon next spring. Their paths are different, but the destination feels shared. Ask any of them what makes Team Transy special and the answers sound remarkably alike: a university that treats them like athletes, a manager who mothers and mobilizes in equal measure, a city where horses are a way of life, and a team culture that turns eight riders into a loud, loyal cheering section.

“We’re still a young team,” Shores said, “but the goal was never just blue ribbons. It’s always been about opportunity and camaraderie. If our riders graduate feeling seen as athletes, supported as students, and connected as teammates, then we’ve done something right.”

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. Many events across the country offer Intercollegiate Team Challenges where collegiate eventers can compete individually or in 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. The USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Championship is a capstone event for the program, which is held annually in the spring. Beginning in 2026, the USEA Intercollegiate & Interscholastic Eventing Championships will be hosted as a standalone event only open to program participants. The event will be hosted on rotating dates with the first year scheduled for May 15-17, 2026, and the second year on May 7-9, 2027. The first two-year bid has been awarded to Stable View to again serve as the host venue. Click here to learn more about the Intercollegiate Eventing Program.

The USEA would like to thank Bates Saddles, Horse & Country, Kerrits, PulseVet, Sidelines, U.S. Equestrian, WeRideTogether, World Equestrian Brands and Young Rider for sponsoring the USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Program.