Internet culture has a phrase for the moment when the consequences of a bad decision start becoming impossible to ignore: “the saxophones are getting louder.”
At UC Davis, the saxophones must be deafening.
On Jan. 9, UC Davis announced it would eliminate its NCAA Division I women’s equestrian team effective July 1, 2026, while elevating STUNT to varsity status. The university cited a third-party report that stated it had reviewed finances, athletic strategy and gender-equity considerations. Coaches and athletes were blindsided and told “not to fight this.”
This wasn’t a struggling program. The team would go on to win its third conference championship and earn its second UC Davis Women’s Team of the Year award. It consistently ranked among the nation’s best, produced graduates who entered veterinary, agricultural and equine professions, and represented one of the few varsity programs directly tied to UC Davis’ agricultural identity.
And there’s no meaningful alternative for the student-athletes.
University officials have repeatedly suggested riders can return to club competition. That sounds reasonable until you understand the realities of collegiate equestrian. Most club programs lack the horses, facilities and roster space needed to absorb more than 30 displaced Division I athletes. The UC Davis club teams no longer practice on campus because of costs and now operate off-site. Additionally, IHSA and NCEA serve fundamentally different purposes. NCEA is the highest level of collegiate equestrian competition and recruits elite riders, while IHSA is structured around broader participation and introducing riders to the sport.
For many athletes, the loss of varsity equestrian doesn’t mean riding at a “lower level”. It means the end of collegiate riding altogether.
Six months later, questions surrounding the decision remain unanswered.
After weeks of public pressure and questions, UC Davis released the consultant report it claimed informed the decision. Instead of settling the controversy, the report ignited it. Team supporters immediately identified factual errors, questionable assumptions and financial calculations they argued were difficult to reconcile with publicly available information.
Public Records Act requests suggest the decision may have been made as early as April 2025, yet recruiting and fundraising continued. Athletes committed. Families made plans. Donors gave money.
As concerns mounted, UC Davis announced on April 3 that it would conduct its own audit of the financial data used to justify the decision. The university gave itself until June 30 to complete its review. Now it is July, the team has officially lost its Division I status, and the public is still waiting for an audit and answers.
Supporters, however, commissioned their own independent review, which concluded the university may have overstated equestrian costs by more than $850,000 annually and questioned accounting assumptions involving donated horses, internal boarding fees, tuition revenue and fundraising income.
And that is why the saxophones are getting louder.
Universities typically release information that supports their decisions. They do not usually sit on it. If administrators remain confident in their numbers, and if the independent review is incorrect, like UC Davis spokesperson, James Nash, has claimed, where is the evidence showing why?
Their silence creates a story of its own.
The university’s own student newspaper editorial board publicly called for greater transparency from campus leadership. The response did not give additional clarity or answers, it was a letter from a university communications officialdefending the administration’s position.
As a communications professional myself, that’s what we call crisis communications.
UC Davis appears to be relying on a familiar strategy: wait, redirect attention and hope the questions fade. If enough time passes, enough headlines disappear and attention shifts to the university’s (expensive) move to the Mountain West Conference, perhaps the controversy goes away.
But those who helped build and support the team won’t fade into the background because we have poured literal blood, sweat and tears into making a successful program.
That’s why this is personal to me.
I didn’t come from wealth or the elite horse-show world. I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Washington state and competed through 4-H on borrowed horses.
At age 18, I moved to California for UC Davis — my dream school because, as a former FFA and 4-H kid, it was the nation’s premier agricultural university and home to the country’s leading veterinary program.
I joined the Western Club Equestrian Team and worked at the Equestrian Center in exchange for housing, helping maintain a facility the university proudly promoted as part of its agricultural mission.
But in 2018, I nearly left. My grades and mental health were struggling, and it felt like the state and school were rejecting me.
So, I made a deal with myself: I had just tried out for UCD’s new DI equestrian team — a program I had helped advocate to bring to campus. If I made the roster, I’d stay. If I didn’t, I’d take it as a sign to leave.
A phone call offering me a roster spot changed my life. I stayed, changed my path and graduated. I built relationships, a career and a future.
None of it would have happened without the opportunities created by the team and UC Davis Athletics.
When UC Davis elevated equestrian to Division I status in 2018, it promised to invest in women’s opportunities. Today, a championship program is gone, the opportunities it created are disappearing, and the transparency the university promised remains nowhere to be found.
Until the UC Davis administration faces the music, releases its audit and answers the thousands of calls and emails it has ignored, the missed deadline and unanswered questions will continue to erode public trust.
UC Davis must acknowledge its mistake and reinstate the team. Until then, their silence will speak louder than any press release they hide behind.
And the saxophones will keep getting louder.
Olivia Russell-Burke is a UC Davis alumna and former member of the UC Davis’s inaugural NCAA Division I equestrian team. She now works for a public affairs and communications firm in Sacramento.
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