Club hosts IHSA event
Nevada equestrian team captain Sarah Tjoa rode an unfamiliar horse around a dusty arena on Saturday wearing a uniform consisting of dirty socks, a dirty sports bra, clean underwear and clean, but stained breeches. The appearance also involved three bottles of hair spray and copious amounts of bobby pins.In a sport where sharing clothing and hectic, cluttered workplaces are common, Tjoa’s get-up followed the recipe for equestrian success perfectly.
On Saturday, the team netted two first-place ribbons and a fourth-place ribbon in a Western-style show where focus was on the rider’s ability to control their horse.
The University of Nevada, Reno team competes in Western shows and English shows, where riders put their horses through a series of jumps.
The team uses the University of Nevada Equestrian center on Valley Street, about three blocks west of campus, to board their animals and host their annual competition, as well as for a practice facility.
Apart from their time spent competing or practicing for competition, the team also works with the Martin Piccolo riding school, a therapeutic riding school for disabled children.
“Children that maybe have cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis, that maybe have physical limitations get on horses and it’s a form of therapy,” Tjoa said. “It’s a really great way to go out and help those kids, and put them on horses.”
All the shows Nevada competes in are associated with the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA). IHSA shows differ from most horse shows by forcing riders to ride horses they are not familiar with. Usually the horses are provided by people in the area of the show.
Several members of the team said IHSA rules provide a unique challenge.
“This kind of competition makes you the best rider you can be,” Tjoa, captain of the equestrian team, said. “If you can’t get on any other horse and be able to ride it, then you’re really not that useful as a rider in general.”
The experience of riding a horse for the first time is different for every rider and every horse. For some, it provides a mixture of fear and excitement.
“It’s scary [to ride a horse for the first time],” Tjoa said. “I’ve heard people say that it’s like test- driving a car for the first time because every car is different. But riding a new horse for the first time is nothing compared. There are so many aspects that go into different horses: how their gaits are, how they move, are they comfortable, what kind of discipline are they used to?”
Others focus on the difficulty of their first encounter with a new animal.
“You’re just basically trying to figure the horse out, trying to figure out what the horse will let you do, what the horse won’t let you do,” Melissa Michaels, a 21-year-old junior, said. “It’s really hard with these situations because a lot of these horses you never had ridden before you go in the show ring.”
The riders joined the team for a variety of reasons. Many came to Nevada expecting to join the team while others found out about the team from the staff at the boarding facility the squad uses.
One rider, Claire Studebaker, an 18-year-old freshman, discovered the team on a Girl Scout trip to the boarding facility when she was ten.
“I just remember looking up to the girls when I was younger, and I was so jealous,” Claire Studebaker said. “I was like ‘Oh man, they get to travel around and ride all their horses.’ It’s just an awesome group of people. It makes a lot of good friends. We have fun traveling, we have fun doing everything. I love it.”
For some of team’s riders, equestrian sports work hand in hand with their animal science majors. But for many, such as Tjoa, their studies and sport are unrelated. Tjoa is a journalism major, specializing in public relations.
“I’m not a person that gets along with a bunch of other girls real well. I played sports for years with a bunch of other girls and I don’t really like them,” Michaels said. “But this team, the girls on it, they’re all so fun. They’re all a lot like me; most of them don’t get along with other girls. We’re not the real girly types.”
And it’s the unity between the team that Tjoa points to that sets it apart from its rivals.
The UNR squad spent most of its time together, in the team trailer on site, while most other teams spent their time milling or wandering around. Whenever a member of the Pack went into the barn to prepare for her ride, she was accompanied by several of her teammates.
“I think one of the things that set us apart is that we’re a team,” Tjoa said. “We travel as a team, we go everywhere as a team, we sleep in the same beds in hotels as a team, we share water and push pins into our skulls as a team.”
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