After performing consistently well all year, Eugenie Carabatsos ’10 has qualified for nationals for the first time in her Wesleyan Equestrian Team career.

“The setup is basically the same for each competition,” said Gabrielle Jehle ’11, who is one of the team’s co-captains, alongside Carabatsos. “Obviously it’s different because they have different courses you’re riding and jumping on, but they’re all set up pretty much the same way.”

This year, the team is looking to repeat its past successes, and it just might be in a position to do so.

Although the Wesleyan Equestrian Team has been around since the 1980s, until now it has been rather small. Currently the club boasts 35 members who meet at Windcrest Farms in Hebron, Connecticut to ride every Friday.

“[The team] takes riders from all levels,” Carabatsos said. “We get people who have never ridden before up to people who’ve done it since they were kids.”

Unlike most other sports, the equestrian team’s season starts in October and has competitions throughout the academic year. The team’s riders borrow their horses from the farm where they practice, and they are assigned random horses to ride at each competition.

“We do English equitation style riding, so we draw random horses and they judge how well we ride on the horse we’ve drawn,” Jehle said “That can be the most frustrating part of riding on an intercollegiate level, because you’re riding on a horse you aren’t familiar with. It’s a really rewarding experience, because they’re judging how well you ride, not how much money you have or how good your horse is.”

This year’s season is almost over for the equestrian team. It has one last event at Dartmouth to look forward to—as well as the upcoming trip to Kentucky for nationals. For the team’s leaders in particular, the trip to nationals will serve as a rewarding and hard-earned end to the season.

“Organizing the team can be quite a chore, because we have to deal with all this paperwork and finances and setting up the carpools,” Cabrastos said. “We teach lessons all day on Fridays and we host a show every semester. But it’s great to get off campus on Fridays and really not worry about anything else. When you’re riding, you can’t think about an assignment or a class. The best, though, would have to be seeing the new riders go from having never been near a horse before to being comfortable trotting by the end of the semester.”