For four years, they’d built their lives around campus life and UMW’s Equestrian Team – worlds the students loved equally but which rarely intersected.
Until now.
Days before graduation, Meredith Gregory ’18 and Emily Rothstein ’18 gathered beneath the university Bell Tower. They’d begun their college careers on foot. Now they’d end with a trek across campus. On horseback.
There were photos to commemorate the occasion – lots of them – in front of buildings full of memories. Virginia Hall, where they’d lived freshman year. Lee Hall, where they’d spent so much of their time.
There was an entourage – head riding coach Teresa Seay, who’d help make this ride possible, and teammates who followed with a wheel barrow and a shovel because accidents sometimes happen.
There were spectators – students who lingered on campus, the faculty who’d taught them. Work crews who pulled smartphones from pockets because it is not every day horses are on Campus Walk.
In fact, said Seay, Gregory and Rothstein are only two of a handful of graduating seniors who have taken part in the tradition that began several years ago.
“We’re off campus. For them to be able to bring horses on campus and do this is huge,” she said.
Beneath the Bell Tower, Gregory and Rothstein paused side-by-side on a pair of horses named Prissy and Wilbur. Then they were off, past George Washington Hall and Trinkle Hall and the bust of James Farmer, where Leni Williams ’18 came to watch.
“I had to see the horses,” she said. “And it’s nice to clap and cheer for our fellow graduating seniors.”
Gregory and Rothstein both joined the Equestrian Team their freshman year. Each fall after, they returned to a place that guaranteed them instant friendships with people who loved horses as much as they did.
“I cannot imagine the past four years without this team,” said Rothstein, an international affairs and sociology major from Sykesville, Maryland, who plans to work with the Global Peace Foundation after graduation.
“The Equestrian Team made my college experience complete,” said Gregory, a geography major from Richmond, Virginia, who this fall will begin the university’s new Master of Geospatial Analysis program.
The team gave them the chance to ride horses, of course. It also taught them about leadership and teamwork, about patience and resilience, about time management and hard work, they said.
It gave them confidence.
On Tuesday, Gregory and Rothstein rode past Spirit Rock, past Willard Hall and Simpson Library and the Hurley Convergence Center and finally, the Anderson Center, where the ride ended.
But for them, there was the sense of coming full circle.