"Cinderella" Equestrian Team with Alaskan Makes its Way to Improbable Victory

Imagine a basketball team advancing to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament by knocking off higher seeds with just six walk-on players who have to pay their own way. While the analogy may not be perfect, that is essentially what the underdog University of Montana Equestrian Team accomplished last weekend by winning their regional championship.

Unlike other schools in their region, the University of Montana Equestrian Team (UMET), which started 14 years ago and is a member team of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA), is not funded by the school, which means the riders have to raise money just to participate in their events. The riders, some of whom had never even been on a horse before joining the squad, have pooled money for gas, raised money to stay in motels, and even had to overcome one of the worst blizzards to hit Missoula in over a decade. The team also only has seven or eight riders, which means they start each event at a disadvantage against schools with three times as many and have no margin for error. The odds are stacked against these lady Grizzlies, but they have kept defying them.

“This year we had several team members who had never been on a horse before, let alone competed in a recognized show,” head coach Katie Lufkin told Breitbart Sports. “We had riders who had only ever been in a western saddle that decided to try English for the first time. These are more reasons why it’s pretty amazing we got the win this year.”

And they will have to defy those odds again just to get an opportunity to be Cinderellas in the next round.

When other teams win regionals, their tickets to the next round — Zones — are punched. But not for Montana’s team, which, like the Jamaican bobsled before the Winter Olympics, is trying to crowdfund (see their page here) their way to Palo Alto to compete in the Zone Championships April 4-6. They need to raise $4,000 to keep their dreams alive. If they can’t raise the money, the clock will strike midnight.