United States Eventing Association

I am Marissa Collins, a junior at USC Aiken. I am currently the vice president of the eventing team as well as an equine scholar who works in the admissions office with a concentration on the equestrian students. I wanted to give an insight of who USC Aiken’s Eventing Team is all about.

I chose to attend USC Aiken because of the difficulty I found being able to event and attend college in many of the schools back in New England. I visited Aiken, SC for a week when my trainer from Massachusetts, Erin Risso, was wintering in Aiken. All it took was one ride in the Hitchcock woods and seeing horse statues and horses on the street signs to hook me in. I fell in love with the campus as well. It was the first school that had no major red flags on my list of requirements. Because of this flexibility I was not concerned that the school did not have a large equestrian program like many schools. I went in knowing that I wanted to help the program grow. In fact I have now turned this into a passion of mine and began to help other equestrian students discover USC Aiken and help make their transition as easy as possible.

During my freshman year, two other girls and I took on the challenge of making eventing a team on campus. The first two years consisted of five girls with our main focus on figuring out all the steps and procedures we needed in order to become an official team. The first two years consisted of many riders’ horses or riders themselves injured. Despite this we tried our best to develop a team. We talked with many in the community to get an idea of what was available to us. We endured any growing pains and setbacks but it took those two years to really figure out who we were as a team and how we wanted things structured. Our discoveries included knowing we wanted to be an official club sport as well as not limited students. Therefore we decided to not designate a coach. Instead all 15-20 of us are boarding and training at multiple facilities around Aiken. This allows each member freedom to board and train wherever best fits their needs. We pride ourselves on using our unique community and taking advantage of all the many opportunities the wonderful Aiken eventing community offers us.

After two years of hard work we have officially been titled a club sport at the University of South Carolina Aiken. This year we went from five team members to having between fifteen and twenty. Our major goals for this year include competing in college team challenges and attending our second annual trip to Rolex Kentucky CCI4*. In order to do this we plan to do a great amount of fundraising so we can cut cost for our members in order to have every member be able to participate. Our first big outing will be the October Paradise HT. As of now we have five riders and five non-riders who plan to attend as volunteers, grooms, videographers and cheerleaders.