Interested in horses and horseback riding? The Equestrian Team is the club for you! No experience is necessary because we welcome anyone with an interest in riding horses! You can even get P.E. credit depending on how many lessons you take or how many shows you attend.
The RIT Equestrian Team is a member of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. This means we attend horse shows at area colleges such as Nazareth, Cazenovia, Alfred, and St. Lawrence University. When we go to shows, we ride the host school's horses. We aren't allowed to school/warm up the horses before our classes, we just get on and go! Horse and rider are paired up randomly by a drawing. This enables each rider to compete on an equal level. Sometimes this becomes a real test of our horsemanship ability. Levels start at beginner walk-trot and progress through advanced open equitation competition. At the novice, intermediate, and open levels, competition includes jumping as well as flat work for Hunt Seat competitions, and go all the way up to reining patterns in Stock Seat competitions. Riders advance through the levels by accumulating points at each horse show. Points carry over from year to year except for the open riders.
We currently ride at Lehman Farms for Hunt Seat, and Evergreen Stables for Stock Seat. You don’t have to have a horse to be on the team. In our lessons, we use the stable’s lesson horses so we do not get used to riding one horse. Lessons are usually $20-25 depending on how many people are there and how long the lesson is. No car? No problem! Most of our members carpool to lessons.