College of the Sequoias Equestrian Team member Jamie Thompson placed 7th in the nation last weekend at the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association National Championships (IHSA) held at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. Over 400 schools compete as members of IHSA.
Thompson, a Visalia native, majors in Animal Science at COS and plans a transfer to UC Davis in the Fall of 2017 with the goal of becoming a veterinarian. She competed in the Individual Intermediate Western Horsemanship category, which judges the rider on the correctness of the rider’s seat, hands and feet, the finesse in riding and the skill of maneuvering the horse through a series of patterns. Riders draw horses so that no rider has an advantage by using a familiar mount.
COS came out of the regional competition at Stanford University with 10 of the top 10 riders in the region and were specially awarded for Top 10 in the region. Four of the riders progressed to the mid-March Semi-Finals in Illinois. COS is one of two community colleges in the region competing against eight other schools such as Stanford, UC Davis and Cal Poly.