Equestrian Team Fall - NU @ Notre Dame

My first team show of the year! I had a lot of fun. I was debating whether or not I should drive down with the team or go home and drive down in the morning with my family and I decided to go with the team. I'm so happy I did, I feel like I bonded with people =]

On our drive down Friday night, we stopped to see one of our team mates who's in the hospital. This was the first time that I'd meet her. She's so sweet and so young (she's a freshman)! I really hope that she gets better soon.

Then we hit the road for Indiana. The drive seemed so short and as soon as we got to the hotel, I crashed. I didn't even hear another girl come in to share the bed upstairs, that's how tired I was.

There's something about waking up early for a horse show...you know? It's so hard to wake up early for school or work or anything else except a horse show. I could probably wake up at 3 AM for one if I had to! Waking up bright and early, polishing my boots and heading out to the arena, we watched the home team warm up the horses.

Now, I find out that my class is second to last. Wonderful. At least it gives me the opportunity to watch everyone else compete, which is one of the most fun parts. One of our riders, Amy, lost a stirrup on her jumping class and completed the course almost spot on! Of course, she didn't get first, but it was amazing to see someone be able to do that! I certainly would've fallen and probably broken my neck.

After a long day of photography, it was finally my class. In Intercollegiate showing, we just randomly pick a horse out of a hat really and have no time to warm him up and aren't allowed to ride him before we get into the show arena. It's supposed to make it a fair test of horsemanship or something like that. Anyways, I get a horse and he's supposed to be push button. Of course, I didn't know that meant half-asleep!

I start off the class switching from what I thought was the wrong diagonal to the actual wrong diagonal then have to switch back again. That really bugged me because I switched 3 times until I thought I was right, then found out I was wrong. Ugh! So points marked for that. Then going into the canter I could not get this guy to canter soon enough and his canter was really wonky so I couldn't tell if he had the right leads either. On the reverse, I thought I had the wrong lead, so I broke into a trot to pick it back up and apparently it looked really bad...

In the end, I got 5th...it's an understatement to say that I was disappointed. I really just wanted to win. I thought I had everything down pat before I got to the show and the one thing that REALLY bothers me is that I messed up my diagonals. I'm not even mad about the cantering. It's that I STILL don't have those darned diagonals down. So more work. The next show is in March, so I have a long way to go to perfect that and really feel them, since I'm just starting to be able to. Here's to working to ensure my first place next time!