UCLA Equestrian: Getting Riders into the Saddle

The UCLA Equestrian Team is a group of highly motivated UCLA students who share a love of horses and passion for equestrianism. Our team has grown from a group of 5, to over thirty members of various years, majors and backgrounds, united in our love for this sport. We spend our weekends representing UCLA at Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) competitions throughout Southern California and Arizona! IHSA allows college students to begin or continue riding while at college, without having to own a horse! This greatly lowers the cost of competing, and makes the sport more accessible than it would normally be. 

However, even at a fraction of the normal cost, membership costs for the equestrian team do add up! Since we are a club sport, we receive minimal funding from UCLA. This in turn means that a lot of our funding comes from team members' dues. While we try to keep our dues as minimal as possible in order to keep the sport accessible, we still need more funding to be able to support our team during the season, without having our members bear a larger financial burden.

The format of IHSA shows which do not require that individual competitors have horses as a result require the school team as a whole to bring horses to the competition. Since our shows are located throughout Southern California and Arizona, the costs for bringing horses to these shows include trailering, food and stabling! In essence, UCLA Equestrian Team members are paying for team members who aren't paying dues! These costs, in addition to members' own transportation, meals and lodging, add up and contradict our goal in making this expensive sport more accessible.  In order to continue to achieve this goal, we're turning to you to help us raise money with this SPARK Campaign!

In the past two years, SPARK campaigns have been an incredible gift to our team, and allowed us to raise money for new saddles for our team and mitigate the costs of postseason competition expenses for our members. We our so grateful for all our supporters who helped make the past two years of SPARK campaigns such a success!

We understand that $4000 is a large fundraising goal, however any donation, large or small, can help contribute to us reaching our goal. We are thankful for any and all donations, and appreciate your continued support. 

We would like to thank all of our families, friends, alumni, fans, and the wonderful staff at UCLA for their support of the UCLA Equestrian Team. We truly could not do it without you. We also welcome donations of gently used saddles, bridles, girths, and other equipment and show apparel such as hunt coats and boots. Please email us at uclaequestrian@gmail.com for any tack-related donations.