Work For the Bigger Cause: Auburn Equestrian Completes Undefeated Season
While Auburn’s season ended before the SEC and NCEA championships, daily care for 60 horses continues
Auburn Equestrian By: Jeff Shearer
AUBURN, Ala. – Reading the global headlines and preparing for the worst, equestrian coach Greg Williams sensed the importance of Auburn’s last regular season meet on March 7.
“The news was starting to break with the virus and things going on in other countries,” Williams said Tuesday by phone, recalling his message to his team. “We’re going to be a locked in No. 1 seed. But now things are different. I don’t even know how the season will finish out. There could be a question about being able to finish our championships.
“I said it’s going to be important to win that last meet and to have an undefeated season. It was just a guess on my part but you could already see the writing on the wall that things were going to be at risk, when we were about to play our last regular season meet.”
Auburn beat Texas A&M 10-9 in dramatic fashion, with Terri-June Granger clinching victory in Reining by the narrowest of margins, 70.5-70. The top-ranked Tigers improved to 13-0 and 6-0 in SEC competition, with only the SEC Championship and NCEA Championship standing between Auburn and a second consecutive perfect season.
“We left for spring break then things started deteriorating really rapidly then,” Williams said.
By the time spring break ended, Auburn University had transitioned to remote learning and the SEC Championships, scheduled for March 27-28 at Georgia, had been postponed. Then came the SEC’s announcement Tuesday that all spring sports had been cancelled, effectively ending Auburn’s season.
“Where do we finish? Will they declare champions? What’s going to be the final bow on the season?” asked Williams, who has communicated with his team members via only phone calls and text messages since the Texas A&M meet. “That remains to be seen.”
Answers to those questions could come next week, when Williams and his fellow equestrian head coaches meet remotely with SEC officials. In the meantime, the Auburn coach takes solace in what his team accomplished in 2019-20.
“I feel like this undefeated season is something that is an amazing accomplishment,” Williams said. “These seniors were part of back-to-back undefeated seasons.
“Last year, when we finished that season undefeated and I said that this was the best team that ever existed in our sport, yet then this team performed even better. An incredibly talented group, but a group that defined this team as their own and brought together in its finality one of the closest, and yet athletic, teams that I’ve ever known of.”
“We were so looking forward to playing in the postseason. I really felt like we were going to have our strongest performance ever.”
“There’s nothing they can feel badly about except for we just really felt like we had a show of dominance about to happen in the postseason. We really wanted to have those rides.”
While the student-athletes complete their spring semester remotely, Auburn’s 60 equine athletes still require daily care, a process affected by strategies to avoid the transmission of COVID-19.
“We’re trying to keep two separate crews right now,” Williams said. “Our typical barn crew is out there right now. While they’re out there together, they’re doing the social distancing. They’re keeping the things they work on, things they touch separate. Our farrier has his own set of halters that he touches. They really are working as carefully as possible.”
“I’ve asked my coaching staff to stay away right now because we wouldn’t want to bring anything in there, and we have to count on at least a couple people staying healthy through this. So if something happens to that crew, then the coaches and I will step in and take over.”
“We’re trying to make sure we have a lot of separation right now so that we always have healthy people to go take care of the horses.”
Auburn equestrian hasn’t lost since March 31, 2018. Victories in two postseason meets would have netted a third SEC championship and seventh national championship. In his calls and emails with Auburn’s riders, Williams stresses not opportunities lost, but opportunities gained.
“In our communications, we just said we were going to focus on the big picture right now,” he said. “We always pride ourselves on having a great culture for work and teamwork. We need to apply that right now nationwide and work for the bigger cause.
“We’re so proud of this program. We’re so proud of where we’re headed. But our thoughts are on bigger problems for the health and economy of this country right now.”
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer
