Mississippi State University offers Equine, Eventing and Equestrian teams to undergraduate students who are interested.
  MSU was the first to start both an Eventing and Equestrian team in Mississippi, both supported by the Department of Animal and Dairy Science at MSU and the local equine community. 
   The focus for the MSU Eventing team which entailed both competition and community outreach. In November the team participated in a collegiate eventing challenge in Lexington, Virginia ,of which, during the Virginia Horse Trials, the team placed second. Team President, Juliana Santiago placed second in the individual competition.  
    Also during the fall, the team held an open house for the community at their training barn, Redbud Farm, where they used the day to educate people about their sport.
 
    Open House participants had the opportunity to meet the team and the coaches, Betsy Ball and Jessica Shull, along with participating in a raffle and carnival games. The spring semester started in Florida with many of the team members competing in the winter show circuit. In April the team and their coaches will return to Starkville to complete their competition season in the summer at Redbud Farm. 
  At the beginning of November, the equestrian team traveled to the Fall Classic, the first competition of the season, at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. The Fall Classic was the largest intercollegiate equestrian competition, which was hosted by Berry College with 13 colleges competing. The teams competed in western horsemanship, hunt seat equitation and equitation over fences courses. Out of the MSU team members, 12 placed in the Top Ten, with two seventh-placed ribbons, four sixth-placed ribbons, four fourth-placed ribbons and one third-placed ribbon. Kelly Moore, a freshman pre-accounting major from Georgia, won the first place ribbon in novice equitation over fences. The most recent competition was held at the end of February where the team traveled back to Berry College. 
 Molly Nicodemus, advisor for the equestrian and eventing team, said the team is part of the Intercollegiate Horseshow Association ,which was established in 1967. 
   “We’re within one region and we compete against schools in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia,” Nicodemus said. “The way that it is set up is that the team travels to the host college and the different schools will have different members that will ride.    
    What the members do is they select out of a hat the name of a horse, hop on an unfamiliar horse, without the chance to practice on them,  they go into the arena and are judged on how they can ride an unfamiliar horse and look good in the process.”
  Nicodemus said they have both English and Western riders which make up an English team and a Western team. 
  “IHSA is set up so you have different levels of riders,” Nicodemus said. “We have two riders that have never shown before, they’re in the beginner class, all the way up to an upper level, what we call an open rider.”
 Nicodemus said all different levels make up a team and contribute equal amount of points toward the team total by the end of the weekend. 
   In preparation for events the team members have the opportunity to take advantage of riding classes offered by the department weekly, training from Nicodemus and graduate assistants. Nicodemus said building a relationship with the local horse community has been wonderful. 
   “They also practice with some local barns and work with the local trainers so that they can get as much practice, on as many different horses and get as many different people working with them,” Nicodemus said. “We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had a lot of local trainers that have donated their time to work with the team.”