Contact:
United States Equestrian Federation, Inc.
4047 Iron Works Parkway
Lexington, KY 40511-8483
Tel: (859) 258-2472
Fax (859) 231-6662
Web site: www.usef.org
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 25, 2007

Lexington, KY- After three days of intense competition with 12 teams in each hunter seat and western division vying for the Varsity Equestrian National Championship, the University of South Carolina (USC) won its second overall championship in three years at the Heart O' Texas Fair Complex on Friday, April 20 after a nail biting head-to-head competition in which both the western and hunter seat championships were tied going into the final round.

Hosted by Baylor University, the sixth annual varsity collegiate riding national championships kicked off Tuesday night with a banquet sponsored by Luitpold Pharmaceuticals for all the affiliated colleges who were participating in the event. Despite stormy conditions Tuesday night, the weather cleared for the competition days. Under these sunny skies, the USC Gamecocks were able to defend their third consecutive hunter seat national team title and a national runner-up finish in western riding to clinch their second overall national title in three seasons.

"To me this win means a lot more because this format I think is where we are going as far as an NCAA Championship," South Carolina head Coach Boo Duncan said. "Our team was competitive on both sides. It's very special to win this. We were a little worried coming into today because we knew we had won the overall title on Thursday so we didn't want everyone to get too carried away with that coming into the championship rounds on Friday. We really stuck to our guns and tried to stay organized and focused today and did as well as I think we could do today."

The unique thing about collegiate riding is that all riders compete on unfamiliar horses. Each rider is afforded only four minutes in the warm-up ring on the unfamiliar horse before competing in front of the judge. Each rider competes in a head-to-head match up against a rider with the school they are paired up against.

The South Carolina hunter seat team steamrolled its way to a third straight national title, dropping only four of its 24 individual match-ups on the way to the title. Georgia gave the Gamecocks their biggest test, but still fell by a 6-2 margin. South Carolina riders Nicole Bourgeois, Lindsay Pace, and Kristen Terebesi competed all week long without dropping a single match.

"We had a lot of confidence going into this weekend," Duncan said. "We beat Georgia twice in the regular season so we were pretty confident heading into the championship match. The more we rode this week, the stronger we got."

Texas A&M won its second western national title in three years with an extremely young squad. The Aggies won the national title with only one upperclassman on the competition roster.

Despite falling to A&M in the western final, South Carolina's magical western run was a key to the Gamecocks winning the overall national title. South Carolina entered the championships as the No. 7 seed (of 12).

Texas A&M won the inaugural national title in Gainesville, FL, in 2002; the University of Georgia won the next two titles; in 2003 in College Station, Texas, and in 2004 in Conyers, GA.

The 2008 Varsity Equestrian National Championships will again be held at the Heart O' Texas Fair Complex in Waco.

For more information regarding these championships, please contact Chris Harrell, Varsity Equestrian, at charrell@athletics.tamu.edu or Stacey Meier, USEF's Director of National Marketing at (859) 225-6974 or via email at smeier@usef.org.

END

As the National Governing Body (NGB) of Equestrian Sport, the United States Equestrian Federation(r), Inc. (USEF) is the regulatory body for 28 breeds and disciplines, including our country's international teams competing in the disciplines of dressage, driving, endurance, eventing, para-equestrian, reining, show jumping and vaulting. With over 87,000 members, it is the country's largest multi-breed organization and annually license more than 2,800 competitions nationwide. The USEF governs all aspects of competition, including education and licensing of all judges, stewards, and technical delegates who officiate shows.

Vision Statement: The vision of United States Equestrian Federation(r) is to provide leadership for equestrian sport in the United States of America, promoting the pursuit of excellence from the grassroots to the Olympic Games, based on a foundation of fair, safe competition and the welfare of its horses, and embracing this vision, to be the best national equestrian federation in the world.