Equestrian

Equestrian

Your scholarship in the USA

Horse riding is a tradi­tion in the USA. Not because of the cowboys, but because of the colleges. Since 1998 the sport has been regis­tered with the orga­ni­zing body of the US college sport NCAA as an “emer­ging sport”. That said, the sport should grow slowly until it can finally be accepted as a full member of the NCAA family. Nevertheless, the US tele­vi­sion station NBC has even reported on the compe­ti­tions. For you, all of this means one thing above all else: There are also scho­l­ar­s­hips in horse riding, with which you can perfectly combine studies with sport.

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Equestrians studying at colleges in the USA

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College teams in the USA

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avail­able full scho­l­ar­s­hips for college equestrians

Equestrian in the USA

How many scholarships are there?

There are now 23 colleges that offer this sport and award up to 15 sports scho­l­ar­s­hips per team. Horses and equip­ment are made avail­able to the riders through the sports scho­l­ar­ship. Your own riding equip­ment is only required for tour­na­ments.

How is the training in the USA structured?

Usually five riders from the univer­sity team compete against another team. On the day of the compe­ti­tion, pairs will be put toge­ther with one rider per univer­sity. They then have to compete against each other on the same horse drawn by lots in one of the following disci­plines:

    • Dres­sage: As in Germany, the riders must show a precise and harmo­nious harmony when carrying out the lessons. However, the horse is drawn to the rider.
    • Show jumping: In this disci­pline, riders have to over­come a course of eight to ten obsta­cles with their horse.
    • Horse­m­anship: Here the horse and rider show diffe­rent lessons in diffe­rent gaits of the horse according to a certain pattern.
    • Reining:Reining is similar to horse­m­anship, only there are addi­tional tasks such as “spins” (360 degree rota­tions on the horse’s hind­quar­ters) and “sliding stops” (stop­ping the horse from gallo­ping and sliding the hind­quar­ters under) added.

What does a season at college look like?

The riding season at the univer­si­ties takes place between September and November and between January and March. Depen­ding on how well your team does in both periods, the season conti­nues with playoff-like compe­ti­tions to choose the national cham­pion. In the USA there are almost exclu­si­vely so-called “dual meets”, where two univer­si­ties compete against each other.

Equestrian

Requirements for your scholarship

In order to qualify for a sports scho­l­ar­ship in the USA, you don’t necessa­rily have to be a German cham­pion. Nevertheless, you should have already parti­ci­pated in German cham­pions­hips and show deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. We can better fore­cast your chances for a sports scho­l­ar­ship if you fill out our non-binding assess­ment of oppor­tu­nities.

Your chance assessment