
TCU equestrian team beats out South Dakota State in season opener at Fort Worth Stock Show
At the spring opener for Texas Christian University’s equestrian team, the Horned Frogs had a lot of advantages over their rivals, the South Dakota State Jackrabbits. The Frogs were on home turf at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. It was TCU Day, and the entire stock show complex was filled with people wearing purple. And the TCU equestrian team ranked third in the nation with an all-time 10-4 record over South Dakota. So it should come as no surprise that the TCU women beat out the Jackrabbits 16-4. On the tan dirt in the John Justin Arena, the women competed in a series of competitions: fences, flat, reining and horsemanship with “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” and “Ice Ice Baby” playing over the loudspeakers.Jessica McAllister, sporting a black hat, purple silk shirt and silver buckle, rode out in the dirt — or footing, as they say — with her horse Amelia. In some ways, McAllister says, her job is to be a horse whisperer.“You have to be able to read what’s going to work that day, whether you need to be really soft and talk to them, or like, slow everything down or if you need to create some energy,” McAllister, a master’s student in business analytics, told the Report before the competition. “Each horse has different cues and different buttons that work for them. So whether it’s you need to use more leg, more seat, more hands, like you have to figure that out,” she added. Surrounded by constant cheers from her teammates, McAllister, who began riding horses before birth when she was in her mother’s belly, rode out into the dirt guiding Amelia in different moves that would make a pattern: sprints and then big stops, fast circles, small circles and fast spins. McAllister’s competitor rode on the same horse. In reining, the Horned Frogs won 4-1, with McAllister earning a 67.5 score.Shea Graham rides Alfie in reining during TCU’s match against South Dakota State at the 2025 Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo on Jan. 30, 2025. (Billy Banks | Fort Worth Report)Ella Bostwick, a liberal arts master’s student from Florida, says that you’ve got to work with the horse but also be fit to compete. The players practice Monday through Friday, along with some Saturdays.“It’s like a lot of cardio and a lot of strength. You have to set up the horse perfectly to have a perfect distance to make the jumps look good and make them all match,” said Bostwick, who competes in jumping seat flat and jumping seat fences. “We work out three times a week, and then a lot of us on the team will go work out together, like outside of our required lifts.”In the stands, whenever a TCU player competed, their teammates stood up and cheered. If the horse looked a little nervous, they supported silently.The game against South Dakota State was a good spring opener, but it was not a conference game. Payton Boutelle, who went on to earn the Most Outstanding Player honors for the competition, stood in the stands and cheered. The Horned Frogs’ next matchup is in Oklahoma in late February, featuring a competition against fellow Big 12 team Oklahoma State. Winning there? That’s not so certain.“We’ve lost to OSU the past four years that I’ve been here. It’s been very close, like coming down to the last point,” said Boutelle, a graduate student studying business analytics. Win or lose, she said, practicing on those horses could help them score a win later on. “Hopefully, it will set us up for success at the Big 12 championship, because those are the horses that we will be riding,” said Boutelle.That championship game — featuring TCU, Oklahoma State, Baylor University and Fresno State — will be on home turf. TCU purple may again fill the stands as competitors spend two days at KSM Bear Creek Farms in Burleson this March. Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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