MVCS High School Equestrian Team Wins 5th State Title in a Row

Both HS and MS Teams 2015 California Champions

The Monte Vista Christian School (MVSC) High School equestrian team competes against 30 active teams in California. MVCS also belongs to Zone 10 (California and Nevada) of the Interscholastic Equestrian Association (IEA) of the United States.

To show you how difficult this type of competition is, consider the following. These equestrian teams travel from venue to venue without any horses as they depend on the host team to provide them. Then the competing teams hold a blind drawing to choose each contestant’s horse. This means that for the visiting team, the riders are riding a horse in front of the judges that they likely have never ridden. This really takes expert equitation; to ride in English/jumper competition on a strange horse and still get a good score.

The MVCS coach is Cassie Belmont who has been at the school since 2008. Besides competition, the team also takes part in exhibitions and schooling shows throughout Northern California. Here are Cassie’s comments from her Facebook page in which she writes about her team and outlines what they will be doing for the next couple of months.

“Our Zone 10 high point teams will be heading to Southern CA in a couple weeks with some awesome individual riders who qualified today at our Region 2 IEA Championship Show. Huge Congrats to Gaby Gerlach, Dani Dawes, Lauren Winkler, Jessica Ellison, Bella Newcomb, Jillian Lindner, Sam Watts, Sean Woock, and Savannah Kreamer in High School, Sydney Shelby, Skye Bolen, Grace Belmont, Kailea Zlatunich, Tennasen Davern and Adrianna Dominguez in Middle School!! Let’s get to work, girls!! LA, and then hopefully Florida next month for Nationals!” – Cassie Belmont –

Five-year State Champions and then possibly to the nationals; quite an accomplishment for a local team.