KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 27, 2017 \u2013 The 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s equestrian team is in the midst of an extended string of success, having won five consecutive regional championships and made its first appearance at the national championships last spring, where the team placed seventh. Despite a rocky start to this year\u2019s campaign, the Rams still have high hopes for another regional championship and a return trip to nationals.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s success is all the more remarkable because equestrian is a club sport, which means the riders must raise about $80,000 each year to train, travel and compete.<\/p>\n
According to team president Jen Blazy, each of the 43 riders must not only participate in weekly riding lessons, team workouts and meetings, but they also conduct raffles, host a golf tournament, sell candles and do other fundraising to pay for the facilities, coach, entry fees and other expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s all worth it,\u201d said Blazy, a senior pharmacy major from Massapequa, N.Y.<\/strong> \u201cAll of our lives we\u2019re taught that horseback riding is an individual sport, but in college you\u2019re not only riding for yourself, but your points count for the team. It\u2019s been fun to be a part of a big team that has become a family to me.\u201d<\/p>\n The 溏心vlog免费B站 riders train at Hunter Ridge Equestrian Center at Ramrod Farm in Ashaway<\/strong>, which is owned and operated by the team\u2019s coach Wendy Brayman. She said that intercollegiate horse shows are quite different from the shows most riders probably participated in while growing up. For instance, the team hosting the show provides all of the horses, which are assigned randomly to the riders. And the riders get little time to become acclimated to the horse.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike at home, where they usually ride the same horse every week, at horse shows here they get on a horse they\u2019ve probably never seen before and immediately go into the ring to compete,\u201d said Brayman. \u201cIt\u2019s a big learning experience for freshmen. Most of them haven\u2019t done it before and have a hard time getting used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have no idea what your horse\u2019s personality is going to be like,\u201d said Jackie Romero-Bourassa, a sophomore pharmacy major from Leicester, Mass<\/strong>. \u201cThey\u2019re like people; they\u2019re all different. They can be crabby or laid back, and their sizes vary, which affects how big their stride is. And some can be really pokey. All we get ahead of time is a description of the horse, and based on that, you just get on and go.\u201d<\/p>\n Riders compete in one of eight classes, based on their experience and skill level, including a category for those with less than six months of riding experience. So the team recruits beginning riders during the first week of school each year.<\/p>\n \u201cYour beginning rider is just as important as your best rider. They can each earn us seven points,\u201d said Brayman. \u201cSo we do take people who have never ridden before. We need people in every class.\u201d<\/p>\n For the eight riders who competed at nationals last year, it was the highlight of their riding career.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was probably the most fun I\u2019ve ever had with this sport,\u201d Blazy said. \u201cI never competed on a level like that before. We rode in this gigantic arena made specifically for our sport, and I earned an honorable mention in my class against 16 other colleges. It was a huge honor just to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n The team\u2019s top rider, Lauren Henry of North Kingstown<\/strong>, placed fourth at nationals last year and earned second place in the Cacchione Cup, which is awarded to the rider who scores the most points in his or her region in the open division, the highest level of competition. It was Henry\u2019s second trip to nationals; she qualified as an individual rider in 2016 and placed ninth.<\/p>\n \u201cMy personal goal for this year is to qualify for the Cacchione Cup again,\u201d said Henry, a junior majoring in entrepreneurial management. \u201cI\u2019d really like to win my class at nationals, since coming in second last year left me a little hungry for the win. And it would be great if the team could qualify for nationals again, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone has such high expectations, however. For many of the riders, being part of the team and encouraging their teammates is as important as winning.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year I was very unsure of myself, so my goal for this year is to make sure all the freshmen are included and to encourage people to care about the team,\u201d said Jessy Peterson, a sophomore psychology major from Chester, N.J.<\/strong> \u201cFor the team, I want everyone to put their best effort in. Whether or not the team gets to nationals again, if we\u2019re all putting in 100 percent, you can\u2019t fault anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 November 27, 2017 \u2013 The 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s equestrian team is in the midst of an extended string of success, having won five consecutive regional championships and made its first appearance at the national championships last spring, where the team placed seventh. Despite a rocky start to this year\u2019s campaign, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}