The Aggies, who claimed the overall national title on Friday-the program’s second overall and first since 2002-made it four in a row and nine total on the western side less than 24 hours later to continue their reign as the nation’s top collegiate western program. The victory also gives the program a combined total of 11 national championships.
“I am so proud of this entire team,” head coach Tana McKay said. “Clinching the overall national championship has been a goal of ours for a number of years, and I know the girls wanted it really bad and it showed in how they rode this week. To have both teams in the finals, something that’s never been done before, and then to win our fourth straight western national title on top of that–it couldn’t get any better than this. The team and the staff have done a great job and worked really hard all year long, and this success is well-deserved.”
A&M and OSU finished competition deadlocked at four, which invoked the raw-score tiebreaker to determine the overall champion. The judges then went to video review, replacing the Cowgirls’ final rider’s score with a zero, which clinched what was already a likely Aggie victory. Officially, Texas A&M won the tiebreaker 1,116.5-975.5.
Junior Carey Nowacek opened the scoring in horsemanship, defeating OSU’s Lauren Halvorson by three and a half points. After the Cowgirls claimed the next two rides, junior Cassie Mantor-in her first ride of the weekend-defeated Marissa Dalton to knot the score at two.
As things shifted to reining, again it was the Aggies who struck first-sophomore Lindsey Bernbaum put A&M in front 3-2 with a win over Caroline Daniels. Second-seeded OSU would again answer back with a pair of victories to regain the lead 4-3 and set the stage for the final ride of the season.
Trailing 4-3 with one Cowgirl rider left, things would come down to A&M senior Abigail Grabein. Grabein, who had posted a 137.5 earlier in the round, awaited the result of her opponent-Katy Krshka-to see if A&M would force the tiebreaker. Krshka was initially granted a 133.5, which would have still given Grabein and the Aggies the victory, but after video review was awarded a zero to remove all doubt. Grabein completed a perfect 3-0 weekend with the triumph and, along with her classmate counterparts in western, leaves Aggieland with four national championships under her belt.
The seventh-seeded Aggie hunter seat team’s historic run through the bracket also would be decided in a raw-score tiebreaker, but this one unfortunately would not fall A&M’s way. Both the Aggies and fourth-seeded Baylor each won two rides on the flat and two over fences, and when the raw scores were added up, the Bears would edge A&M 1,192-1,070.
Senior Maggie Earle capped her Aggie career with two more wins on Saturday, making her an unprecedented 8-0 at this week’s NCEA Championship. She not only set a school record for victories at the event, but posted a school-record for the second time this week over fences, this time setting the new standard with a 180-point showing in an easy defeat of Lisa Goldman. Earle’s other point came on the flat, where she also bested Goldman, this time by the score of 152-136.
True freshman Haley Buchmiller completed a perfect 4-0 week on the flat in her first appearance at NCEAs, cruising to a 20-point victory on Saturday. A&M’s other point came from junior Kori Pickett, who won her second straight over fences to close the season.
Saturday marked the end of an historic weekend for the Aggie equestrian program at NCEAs. Not only did Texas A&M win its first overall national title since 2002, but the Aggies became the first program in NCEA history to advance to the finals in both disciplines, the first to win four consecutive western crowns and put the hunter seat team into the finals for the second time in school history.
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(Friday) WACO, Texas-Texas A&M clinched the National Collegiate Equestrian Championship on Friday evening with semifinal victories in both the hunter seat and western brackets at the Extraco Events Center.
The Aggies claimed the overall national title-the program’s second overall and first since 2002-with a 6-2 win over Georgia in hunter seat and a 4-3 defeat of South Carolina in western. The national title is the 10th overall for A&M, which has also won eight western national championships. In addition, the Aggies became the first program in NCEA history to advance to the finals in both disciplines.
Texas A&M will look to become the first team to ever sweep all three national championships on Saturday afternoon when the Aggies battle Baylor in the hunter seat finals and Oklahoma State in the western finals. A&M’s western team is looking for its fourth consecutive national title, while the hunter seat riders are seeking their first. Both match-ups are scheduled to get underway around 1 p.m. (CT).
The story of the weekend for Texas A&M is its seventh-seeded hunter seat squad, which pulled an upset of No. 2-seed South Carolina earlier in the day to reach the semis. This time, it would be third-seeded Georgia who was the victim-as the Aggies took six of eight possible points for the third straight time this weekend en route to their second finals appearance in history.
Senior Maggie Earle continued to be the star of the weekend for A&M, moving to 6-0 at this year’s NCEAs with a victory on the flat and another over fences. Haley Buchmiller joined her in the winner’s circle on the flat to split that discipline. Soon thereafter, Earle’s victory over fences combined with wins by Leah Chenelle, Kori Pickett and Lia Chafee gave the Aggies the first fences sweep of the Bulldogs in school history and put Texas A&M into the hunter seat finals for the first time since 2008.
Simultaneously, the top-seeded western team was battling fifth-seeded South Carolina in an effort to make its fourth consecutive national finals appearance, and the Aggies would gut out a 4-3 victory-its 13th in a row at NCEAs.
A&M opened up a strong lead with an impressive reining performance, as the first three riders-Courtney Dawe, Becca Murray and Abigail Grabein-all picked up victories and staked the Aggies to a 3-0 lead.
A tie score on the final reining ride of the match-up still left the Aggies one win away from a finals berth. As the discipline flipped to horsemanship, the Gamecocks won the first two points to pull within one, but Amanda Brightwell’s two-point win over Maggie Fortune was the clinching ride and put A&M into the finals.
Scoring updates will be provided on aggieathletics.com and through the Aggies’ official twitter feed at @AggieEquestrian. In addition, free live video will be available on collegiateequestrian.com.
