our college equestrian club is looking into joining the intercollegiate horse show association and I was wondering what other colleges are paying to be apart of the IHSA including entry fees, travel, lessons, etc. Also, any fundraising ideas would be great too!
I would imagine it varies a bit from school to school, but where I am it’s $1400/semester (so $2800/year). Includes one lesson and one hack ride every week. Entries and coaching fees for showing are in addition to that. Shows typically cost between $150-$300 for me. Usually there is some money from team dues left over, in which case we use it to get nice team polos or something along those lines.
Sorry I am a little confused so bare with me. So the $1400/semester is paid for by who? & that is just for lessons? Entry fees, coaching fees, travel fees are paid by the team/school or is that out of pocket of the team members? I’m assuming when you say the show cost for you $150-$300 is what you pay out of pocket and if so what do you pay for yourself? Sorry for all the questions.
Each team does it slightly differently and from what I can tell, a lot of it depends on whether or not your coach is employed directly by your school (i.e stables on campus) or is located off site with his/her own barn and is paid by the school to also coach IHSA.
Some schools have students pay their show fees/travel fees out of pocket and split the cost of coaching depending on how many team members there are. Others schools have a more “flat rate” approach where the schools offer x amount of rides per week/per semester for a certain price. When I was IHSA, my school had two options. You could either ride 3x per week or 5x per week and all entry fees/travel fees/ and coaching was included with that fee.
When I did it (a long time ago) the school paid a small stipend to the coach-- I think $500 or so a semester. Students paid everything else-- group lesson fees, entries, membership, gas/hotel etc. I think we did get a quantity discount on lessons/coaching at shows.
Got it! Thanks. I was hoping to get a rough estimate how much it would cost an individual and the team so we could discuss it with the school and see if they would be willing to pay some of it. However, it seems like it varies too much from school to school.
Ohh I see. Thank you!
It might be worth taking a look at several school’s teams and how they’re set up and then trying to see what their fees are and what might work for your school. That way you could bring those figures to your school and give them a better idea of what kind of set up/expenses they might have.
Where I went to school IHSA was a varsity sport - so riding was fully paid for by the school. I bought a team jacket and provided my own show clothes. The college paid literally everything else. I rode 5 times per week (3 lessons, 2 hacks) and more if I was taking a class as part of my minor.
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Yes, that is what i plan on doing. I should probably reach out to the teams of the surrounding schools directly.
We dont have any equestrian facilities so i am very doubtful that our school will allow us to become a varsity sport. I wish they would though!
Also check with your school’s student activities office. I still don’t know how it all worked, but the year my daughter did IHSA, the team got $$ from the student activities general fund, and she didn’t have to pay a dime for anything. This was at a private university - imagine it would be different at a public university.
Yes we are at a California State University so i doubt they will pay for everything, but we will be discussing it with them to see if they will pay a portion of it.
I’m a faculty advisor for an IHSA team at a large state school. Our team is a club sport and receives minimal school funding, and we work out of two local privately owned barns (one hunt seat, one western). The team doesn’t have their own horses, just uses the lesson horses at the barns. Here’s the break down for what it costs to do the hunt seat team for a school year:
IHSA membership: $40
Annual team dues (covers show travel/hotel, any post-season costs, and some gear): $300
Full year of weekly lessons (package of 4 is $117 with team discount): $1053
Show fees ($40/class with ~8 shows, could be more if you flat and jump): $320
Optional gear (team jacket, backpack, extra practice shirts…): $10–$90 per item
So for 9 months of lessons, regular season travel and show fees, all post-season costs, and a bunch of optional gear it’s around $1900 for the year if you’re doing one discipline, one division. That cost changes for riders competing both western and hunt seat, as well as for those who jump and flat at most of the shows. We also have people who take more than one lesson a week.
That number is usually a bit of a shock to people who haven’t really shown a lot, but our team members who have are always so pleased to hear they can ride and show for a full year for the same price as one A show! And honestly that cost is pretty comparable to some of the other club teams on our campus—dance and hockey both charge over $2k in dues a year so we feel pretty good about it.
Running the team costs about $25k a year. A little less than half of that gets covered by dues. ~$5k comes from our university’s club sports office, which distributes money every year based on club participation and fundraising activities. We make about $5-7k from hosting a two-day hunt seat show. And then we have fundraisers throughout the year to cover the rest. We do an apparel sale in the fall that makes about $1k every year, get another $1k from restaurant partnerships where we get 25–50% of the profits on a given night, we do letter writing to people’s family members/old trainers/whoever they can think of. I keep trying to get an online used tack sale off the ground too but I’ve been so busy it hasn’t happened yet! We just asked people for old tack/clothes/gear and we’ll sell it on eBay or Facebook groups.
I’m really hoping long term to beef up our fundraising so we can offer “scholarships” to entice newer riders to try it out (especially for walk-trot). I’d also like to be able to cover class fees for everyone out of our budget and start building a lending closet of show clothes for both disciplines. So to cover that we’d probably have to hit more like $15-$20k a year in fundraising instead of $10k.
Hope that’s helpful. Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions.
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Santa Cruz and Berkeley might be good schools to reach out to about how they run their teams and what it costs. I know both practice and coach offsite using other established trainers/horses, which sounds like what your team would likely do. Which CA state school you’re at will probably make a big difference in the costs as well - I expect bay area or LA will be more pricey to find something close enough to campus for students to get to; other areas likely more reasonable.
This is so helpful! The hypothetical budget I came up with came out to about 25k. I am hoping we can get some funding from the school so we will see. Is each team required to host a a show? That is one thing I didn’t include in the budget I did since I had no idea how it works or how much it would cost. Sounds like you turn it into a fundraiser some how. Can you explain that a little bit? An appeal sale is a good fundraising idea! Can you also explain how you do that? Thanks for such helpful info!
I know when I was in IHSA we ran a few shows for schools that were technically “hosting” because they didn’t have the facilities to actually host. It was their show but they used our horses and facilities (we were still responsible for getting the horses ready and holding them during the show etc.). So perhaps an arrangement like that would work for your school?
Lyssa, I started Sonoma State’s team and now work for a big IHSA school in CA. If you want to PM me with more details (which school, if you have a trainer you’re working with, and how many riders are interested), I’d be happy to help you navigate this in any way I can. The challenge is that programs run so differently from school to school, so that information is important to you moving in the right direction.
I’m headed into work right now, but hunter’s wonderful post will give you a great starting point.
So each team is not required to host a show, but in our region anyway you pay a fine if you don’t host. I don’t think it’s a lot but it’s meant to offset the cost of Regionals ribbons.
We make good money on the IHSA shows, as do pretty much all the other schools in our region. Our region sets the entry fees ($40/class last year), we pay $4/ride to the national organization and a buck or two to the region. So that leaves $35 per ride that the team keeps. So then we work out the rest of the costs in such a way that we make a good profit. Find a facility that rents for cheap, get discounts on ribbons, free prizes if we can manage, only hire in-town judges so we don’t pay travel fees, etc. We also have done judge’s clinics (ask the judge to stay an extra hour to do a lecture, charge $10 a person), raffles, sell concessions, etc. at the shows to make more money on top of the entry fees. Horses get “donated” for the day from the local horse community.
Apparel sales are really easy in theory, but it depends on your school’s rules. I work in communications and marketing and used to be a fundraiser at my university so I know the rules really well—we’re very strict about the use of our brand. But if your school isn’t very strict you just have to design something you think people would like, find a vendor (I like Teespring because you won’t have to order a bunch of product beforehand and risk not selling it), and task all your riders with selling. We have to work through approved vendors because our school only licenses four companies to print anything related to the school brand (so just saying “University Name Equestrian Team” falls under that), but luckily one of them does a similar online sale function to Teespring. We make a decent amount of money that way. I can almost guarantee that every other club sport at your university has done something similar—check in with some of them and see how they’ve gone about it.
My daughter went to an open house event hosted by a D1 school with an IHSA team recently. As a mom, I was pleasantly surprised with the costs. Each student takes at least one lesson a week at the instructor’s going price. Show expenses such as hotel are divided up, and the participant pays for their classes and coaching. The cost of a show for someone doing multiple classes was under $300. I will add that the horses and coach were fantastic.
