IU Equestrian Team wins first regional team title

Megan Gaare and Liz Atkins have ridden in horse shows all their lives. So when the IU juniors realized they needed to step up and give fellow team members lessons and coach them during competition in addition to their own training, they saddled up for challenge.\nIt paid off.\nTheir experience and coaching helped the IU Equestrian Team capture its first-ever regional championship this weekend at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute.\n"Megan and Liz are really helpful and we're all supportive of each other," said team member Helen Reynolds. "Megan teaches lessons for a lot of girls on the team. She has the right kind of experience."\nCompeting in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, the IU equestrians held a one-point advantage going into the regular season's final weekend. After two shows in Terre Haute, the team edged out Purdue by an unofficial margin of 15 points while the University of Notre Dame finished third.\nIn the IHSA, scoring works by tallying a team's total at each show and adding them up to determine a final regular season score. The equestrian team has competed in nine of the 10 shows it was eligible for since the season started in September -- missing only the first competition of the year. \n"We were in a 40-point deficit at the beginning of the season," Atkins said. "We were digging our way out of that the whole year." \nTo crawl out of that hole, the team used consistency as its motto -- finishing either first or second in all of the eight remaining competitions, including a first-place showing this weekend.\n"It wasn't just one or two individuals stepping up," Gaare said. "It was an overall team consistency -- everyone just kept improving."\nThe squad will have plenty of time to gear up for zones, which is the next level of team competition. Purdue University will play host to the event the second weekend of April. It will have to combat with the likes of Kansas State University, a team with varsity status. The IU team competes as a club sport and operates with self-fundraised money.\n"Just because they're a varsity team doesn't necessary mean they're better," said Gaare. "However, they do have the opportunity for more training and better facilities and horses with the money they have to work with." \nBut before the squad gallops into zones competition, it will compete in the individual regional competition at Purdue April 1 and 2. Only a handful of women will ride, including Gaare and Atkins in Open Fences (the highest level one can ride, which involves maneuvering the horse over a course of fences) and Gaare, Atkins and senior Meredith Hill in Open Flat (the highest level of competition in which a rider is judged on her control of her horse as well as her "look" and posture on the horse). Hills will compete in Intermediate Fences, while senior Julia Goodman will ride in Intermediate Flat. Reynolds and sophomore Becky Bielinski will compete in Novice Flat.\n"We have a really good chance of winning," Gaare said. "We have some of the best riders in the region and hopefully we can carry over our success to zones"