Completed Event: Equestrian versus Sacred Heart on November 9, 2025 , Win , 6, to, 3
Final
Equestrian
vs Sacred Heart
6
3
Spotlight on Samantha Parsons
4/10/2010 1:52:00 PM | Equestrian, Athletics
In the 1980s there was a standout women's basketball player at Dartmouth whose parents told her she could go to the College, but only if she sold her horse to help pay the bills.
That might well have been a deal-breaker for Samantha Parsons.
A senior from Weston, Conn., with designs on medical school in another year or two, Sam Parsons happens to be a co-captain of the Dartmouth equestrian team and the proud owner of a 19-year-old horse named Glory.
The good news is that Parsons didn't have to sell Glory - officially Old Glory when he's competing - to attend Dartmouth. The bad news, or at least it seemed to be bad news at the time, was that she wasn't allowed to bring the big guy with her when she first rolled into town. Fact is, her parents didn't let her board him at Dartmouth's Morton Farm until this year, which she now realizes was a good thing.
"I wasn't happy about it at the time," Parsons admitted with a smile last week. "I'm glad to have him here, but it really is a lot of work. It takes so much time to take care of another being, and having another being to think about.
"It's great to have him here. It you didn't get the grade you wanted or had a bad day you can go see him and it helps clear your head. The worst days are better when we are together, but I'm still very happy that I had three years to be a normal college student."
Your definition of normal might vary.
You can be sure there are a lot more college students falling into the sack at 5 a.m., on weekends than there are college students getting to the barn at that hour the way Parsons and her teammates sometimes do on competition days. While the normal college student might buzz by Dick's House to get something to deal with a sore throat, if Glory has a sore throat that's now on Parsons.
Normal? Normal college students don't wander across the Dartmouth Green wearing riding boots and breeches with suede patches. OK, maybe that's changing a bit.
"Actually, the riding boot style has come in," Parsons said with a laugh. "Quite a few times I've had somebody ask where I got them. Same with the patches. I'm getting a lot fewer strange looks than I used to."
Because she's been riding since she was 5, Parsons is used to people asking questions about her sport. Give her a chance and she'll explain how so much of riding can be the luck of the draw. How at one show you might be assigned a horse that is "like driving a Toyota Corolla," and at another show it might be like getting behind the wheel of "a souped-up monster truck," which is how Glory was when he was younger.
Over her career at Dartmouth Parsons has found auto racing and football analogies handy because her classmates are genuinely interested in what she does. "They ask a lot of questions and they are starting to get it," she said.
For all her background riding, it took Parsons a while to "get" the college equestrian experience.
"Her first year here she was learning the ropes of intercollegiate riding," explained coach Sally Batton. "It's so different from the United States Equestrian Federation competition where it's all so individual and you ride our own horse. Sam was an experienced rider, but she had to spend a year kind of trying to figure it all out."
Parsons enjoyed some success as a sophomore before making history a year ago when she won the open flat, open fences and Cacchione classes at the Zone championships, and advanced to the national championships in Tennessee in all three.
"We've had national champion teams from our Zone and we've had a lot of national champions come out of our Zone, so it's pretty strong," Batton said. "But no one could remember anyone in recent history that has won all of those classes at Zones."
Batton credits part of Parsons' success to the fact that she simply had no clue about the significance of what she was doing last year, which Parsons won't debate.
"When I qualified for Nationals in three events I said, 'Really?' I had no idea," she said. "It was great. The judge focused on my 'workmanlike' style with the horses. I guess my style worked with his."
That's not always the case, which she discovered this year. But while she hasn't had the kind of season she did a year ago, that's in the eyes of the judges. Not in the eyes of her coach.
"It's hard to say as a coach because I'm biased, but she looked just as good to me this year," said Batton. "I guess last year that the results showed in all of her qualifications, but this year what really showed was her becoming a true horsewoman and frankly, I'm more proud of her for that.
"We ride in Hunter Seat Equitation and it's like being judged in figure skating. It's all subjective and what the judge likes on that day. If you don't fit into that style, maybe because you are on an uncomfortable horse, you don't do as well. So to me, what is more important is not how pretty you look posed on the horse, but what kind of horse-woman you are."
Although she would have loved to make another run at Nationals, Parsons has no complaints about how things have worked out. Not this year, and not since she's been in Hanover, even if Old Glory only spent one year enrolled at Dartmouth.
"I absolutely love it here," said Parsons, who will do a post-baccalaureate year before applying to medical schools. "I wouldn't change a thing. Sometimes it's challenging, but I've learned a lot about myself and about the world since I've been here. It's been great."
Players Mentioned
Open
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