The MC team was named "Best Small Team" for IHSA Zone 5 -Region 1.
3/11/2009 12:49:54 PM
CLINTON, MS - Mississippi College equestrian team members Meredith Guider and Sara Mellado picked up more honors during their second season - good enough to qualify for regional competition. Also, the MC team was named "Best Small Team" for IHSA Zone 5 -Region 1.
The Intercollegiate Horse Show Association's regionals will be March 14 at Sewanee, TN. Based at Providence Hill Farm, the six-member MC team is led by interim coach Becky Baumel.
Guider, 21, an MC senior from Utica, finished 4th best in America at the IHSA nationals in Los Angeles in May 2008. The regionals and zone competition in Brooklet, Ga. on March 28 are key events as riders from colleges nationwide seek spots in the nationals in Murfreesboro, TN April 23-26.
The MC equestrian team last competed at the Murray State University IHSA show Feb. 28-March 1. Mellado, 21, a resident of Mesquite, Texas, won a first place in the novice - over the fences event at the show at the Kentucky school. "She's a treasure," said nationally recognized artist and longtime MC professor Sam Gore, Mellado's grandfather.
A Christian Studies major and MC sophomore, "Sara has liked horses as far back as I could remember," Gore said at his Clinton residence Thursday. His talented MC granddaughter is quite the athlete - she did the pole vault in high school in Texas where her father, Ed Mellado, serves as the track coach. Her father and mother, Jan Mellado, are both MC graduates. "She (Sara) is a big joy," said Gore, a 1951 MC alumnus. Besides that, she's a top-notch rider, he said.
"I'm so proud of everybody on this team,'' Sara Mellado said. "We've all tried to work so hard to get better.'' Sara's horse, Lady Lucita, is a four-year-old thoroughbred.
At a horse show at Sewanee Feb. 14-15, Guider qualified for the regionals in both the novice over the fences and novice on the flat categories. Guider was a star rider at Virginia Intermont College before she transferred in 2007 to MC, not far from her home in Hinds County. In Los Angeles, Guider, a business major, was in competition that brought the nation's top 18 riders to California.
Other members of the MC team are: Cameron Crowe of Belden, Whitney Dedmon of Grenada, Rebekah Langley of Memphis and Kimily Trehern of Pascagoula. For more information on the MC team contact Providence Hill Farm at 601-925-0557 or the MC athletic department at 601.925.3341 or visit www.mc.edu