Photo courtesy of Angie Seabolt.
Members of the Chelsea Equestrian Team after their regional championship win.
Competing at a horse show in the Interscholastic Equestrian Association requires more than just showing up and riding well. Angie Seabolt, who helped create the Chelsea Equestrian Team last fall, said riders must show responsibility and versatility in order to succeed.
Seabolt, a bus driver with Shelby County Schools, created the new IEA team with Stephanie Gingles, who owns Hidden Hills Equestrian Center in Wilsonville, in September 2018. IEA competitions are open to grades 4-12, though the Chelsea team is only middle and high schoolers. Seabolt said the first year’s team was four middle school students and five high schoolers, most from Chelsea.
“We liked the aspect of what it taught the girls and the responsibility that came with it,” Seabolt said.
Seabolt said part of the appeal of starting a scholastic equestrian team is that the IEA doesn’t require riders to own their own horses, making it a more affordable sport to compete in. The Chelsea team competes in flat classes and hunter jumper classes, though the IEA also offers western disciplines.
IEA competitions are unconventional from typical shows, Seabolt said, in that riders are expected to handle horse care “all day, every day” themselves — no outside assistance allowed.
“Parents are actually not allowed to help. It is all the responsibility of the riders,” Seabolt said.
Riders also don’t know what horse they’ll actually compete with, either. Seabolt said the team brings horses with it, but all team members must enter a random drawing to be paired with a horse that may be from another team.
“You have to be very versatile as a rider,” Seabolt said.
“That’s the beauty of it,” she added, “… you don’t have to have your own horse, and even if you did have your own horse, you wouldn’t use it anyway.”
Over the course of five shows in the season, Seabolt said the team competes for individual and collective points in order to move on to regional competitions. This year, five riders and the middle school team earned enough points for regionals, which was Feb. 2.
The middle school team won its competition and qualified for the zone competition, scheduled for March 31. A good performance there would enable the team to compete in nationals in April, Seabolt said.
Some of the riders on the Chelsea team, Seabolt said, are interested in riding competitively at the collegiate level, and being on an IEA team sets them up to prepare for that opportunity.
Chelsea Middle School eighth -grader Jill Alexander, who has been riding for eight years, said she decided to join the team to try “something different from the regular shows,” and many of her friends are also on the team. She liked the new experience of having to focus on an entire team’s performance on top of her individual talent.
“It was a great experience,” Alexander said of the regional competition.
“The playing field is very much leveled,” her mom, Leigh Ann Alexander, said of the IEA competitions, since the ability to buy a more expensive horse is taken out of the equation. “The girl is the one being judged, it’s not the horse.”
Jill Alexander said she intends to be part of the team again next year.
The equestrian season starts with a summer camp and regular shows run from October to January. Seabolt said riders in the team must commit to two team practices at Hidden Hills every month and four individual lessons per month.
Registration is $250, which covers insurance and IEA membership, and entry into individual shows costs about $80, Seabolt said.
“We would love to see us have even more team members than we’ve had this year,” she said.
To learn more or register for the 2019-20 team, email Seabolt at cbolt123@bellsouth.net. More information about the Interscholastic Equestrian Association is available at rideiea.org.
