Despite winning its third conference championship in March, a California university abruptly ended its top-ranked equestrian program — leaving student-athletes stranded without a team and a college to attend.
UC Davis announced its shocking decision to cut equestrian as an intercollegiate sport in January, citing an external review from Collegiate Consulting that analyzed the cost of the program to justify its decision, The Chronicle reported.
Parents said the team was heartbroken about the decision, which left student-athletes in limbo as the deadline to transfer to another program had already passed.
Some students who were recently recruited to the team have since been turned away and denied regular admission to UC-Davis.
While the university largely cited budget constraints to eliminate the program, emails and documents obtained by parents and provided to the Chronicle paint a much different picture — revealing school leadership was still recruiting and soliciting donations up until a month before the announcement, despite holding internal conversations planning to axe the program for the past year.
An independent audit of the university’s report is also coming under fire for allegedly misrepresenting the true cost of the equestrian program, which supporters argue would actually net the university up to $700,000 annually.
Rosemary Fritsch, whose daughter Rayna was recruited back in October 2024 — when schools officials behind the scenes had already planned on cutting the program — said she was devastated when she received the news over email.
“She knew she would have been overlooked” at other colleges, the mother told the Chronicle, “because she didn’t have fancy clothes or the most expensive horse.”
While Fritsch said he daughter was offered a chance to still attend the university, other parents told the outlet their student-athletes were either wait-listed or denied.
The timeline of the events and the financial audit used to justify the decision are now under scrutiny.
In February 2025, UC-Davis Chancellor Gary May told all university administration to plan for a 10 percent budget cut, a month later the equestrian team was on the chopping block as it would reportedly save just over a million dollars annually.
By early April, it seemed the decision was set in stone and other possibilities no longer needed to be considered “due to elimination of the equestrian program moving forward,” the Chronicle reported citing and an internal spreadsheet.
The was seemingly confirmed in August, when an athletic budget spreadsheet said axing the program was approved pending an external review, according to the outlet.
But that third-party analysis was completed after the university announced its decision to end the equestrian program sparking outrage from parents and student-athletes.
Supporters of the team are now pushing back, telling the Chronicle that UC-Davis athletics director Rocko DeLuca was merely looking for an excuse to frame the program as too expensive.
“I don’t understand why they’re not reinstating the team,” said Sigrid Elschot, a parent of an equestrian athlete. “We don’t even have a locker room.”
Supporters are suing De Luca and other school officials, alleging the athletics director “fraudulently inflated the Equestrian program’s budget” and misled recruits when they knew for months the team was being cut.
The University’s police department is also investigating potential wire fraud as school leadership effectively decided to end the program while still soliciting donations, the Chronicle reported.
Andy Schwarz, one economist who was hired by supporters to conduct an independent audit, told the Chronicle the numbers from the external review don’t add up when determining the actual cost of the program.
The biggest error was a $665,000 price tag to purchase the horses, despite the animals being donated to the University, Schwarz told the outlet.
Schwarz also said the report didn’t take into account that many of the students pay out-of-state tuition, and estimated the university could bring in up to $700,000 annually.
UC-Davis issued a statement back in April, defending its decision to cut the program.
“We believe that all policies and practices were followed and that decisions regarding the Equestrian program were made appropriately and with the best interests of the UC Davis community in mind,” the university said in a statement.
The school is conducting its own review to determine the reliability of the financial information that was used to evaluate the program and the fundraising practices — but its findings won’t be released until June 30, the equestrian team’s final day, the Chronicle noted.
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