Student-athletes are used to balancing academics and athletics, but for the University of North Florida’s equestrian team, balance is more than a metaphor. It’s a skill they practice every day in the saddle.

Like any student-athletes, UNF equestrian team members have to train and attend classes. However, team members must also travel 40 miles to practices and care for large animals.

According to the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, the UNF equestrian team is among more than 400 teams worldwide. These teams host over ten thousand athletes of all genders. Teams have five regular-season shows per semester, then they will go to finals if they qualify. 

Morgan Cox, the team’s vice president, explained how the sport works. She said that at each competition, the hosts provide horses for the athletes to compete with. Athletes are then expected to jump a horse they have never ridden as if they have been practicing with it for weeks. Judges look at how well they communicate with the horse and how it responds to them. 

“We just got the team up and running again this year,” Cox said. Previously, UNF did not have an equestrian team since the head coach left in 2022. Cox wanted to compete in college, so she knew who to ask. 

Jana Lorimer, the team’s head coach, had coached Cox in middle and high school. She agreed to be the head coach for UNF’s team. This team is different from her middle and high school teams because athletes compete in a completely different style. 

The IHSA has two main divisions of riding: hunter seat and western. Hunter seat focuses on jumping and discipline. Western riding focuses on things like cattle reining, according to IHSA’s website. The two disciplines have different riding styles and saddles. 

Freshman teammate Brandon Davis grew up riding horses from the age of 10, but never expected to have an opportunity to ride competitively past the high school level. 

Davis said he had to learn a completely different style of riding in college, the complete opposite of how he learned to ride and compete in middle and high school. This was more than learning a new sport; this was retraining himself to do the same sport in a completely different way. 

 “I love how the team is more like a team, not just an individual sport,” Davis said. Rather than competing as individuals, each team member earns points for the team as a whole. 

The team with the most collective points at the end of a show is the winning team. This means that members focus on more than just themselves. They actively watch and cheer on their other teammates while they compete, Lorimer said. 

As the only male on his team, Davis said he did not have much of a different experience from the women on the team. “It’s probably harder for Jana (Lorimer) than it is for me,” he said. “She’s used to saying ‘girls go left,’ and now she has to say ‘girls and Brandon.’”

Though IHSA equestrian is a team sport, team members do not always practice as a team. Since members compete individually, they can also schedule practice sessions with Lorimer individually. This allows Lorimer to coach each athlete one-on-one. This helps students like Cox, who have a job on top of school and sports. 

Lorimer runs her practices like competitions. She has each athlete get on a horse and jump it, only once, without any opportunities to start over if they make a mistake. Then, they will rotate onto a different horse and repeat. Athletes also work on flat work, which means walking and trotting. She said her favorite part of coaching this team is that her athletes “get along really well and support each other.” 

While Lorimer does not have specific academic requirements for her team, the IHSA requires athletes to be full-time college students. This means each athlete takes at least 12 credit hours per semester, usually equalling four classes. 

Though the equestrian team can be tough to balance with academics and jobs, team members still say they are grateful for the opportunity to be part of it.

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