Maryville College senior wins national title and graduates with honors
June 6, 2023
This year, Maddie Cunningham ‘23 became the first MC athlete to win a national title. A few short days later, she crossed the stage, graduating with cum laude honors.
Cunningham has been riding horses for over fourteen years. Growing up outside of Hilton Head, South Carolina, she preferred horseback riding to lounging on the beach. In high school, as a member of the Evermore Farms Interscholastic Equestrian Association team, Cunningham discovered the equestrian team at Maryville College. During her junior year at Hilton Head Christian Academy, Cunningham toured the College and fell in love with the campus.
Cunningham started at MC in Fall 2019 and was just beginning her first collegiate equestrian season when the coronavirus pandemic hit. While Cunningham was unable to begin competing until the next school year, she focused on her studies and riding.
“It was a great first semester at Maryville College, especially taking part in the equestrian team’s ‘boot camp,’” she said. “But then during my second semester, COVID hit, and my sophomore year was spent mostly online.”
Cunningham’s senior thesis, advised by MC Psychology Professor Dr. Ariane Schratter, examined developmental impact caused by child trauma. She also interned at the Harmony Family Center, working with interventions that utilize animal therapy with horses and dogs. Cunningham will continue to follow this path as she attends the University of Tennessee’s master of social work counseling track in the fall. A Study Abroad visit to Switzerland, she added, taught her about ways other countries and cultures safeguard children, and how they might be implemented in the United States.
“Switzerland has an ideal set up for child welfare, and learning how they protect their children and provide resources was eye-opening,” she said.
From being a member of Psi Chi, the psychology honors society, to the captain of the equestrian team, Cunningham’s senior year was busy but that didn’t stop her from qualifying for “zones finals.”
The Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) divides the United States and Canada into eight zones. According to the IHSA, zone finals are the final show before an equestrian can qualify for the National Championship of the IHSA. “During the year, contestants accumulate points at their IHSA local shows to qualify for the Regional Finals in their respective divisions, according to the organization’s website. “The top two riders in each class of the Regional Finals move forward to the Zone Finals. The top two competitors in each class at Zones qualify for Nationals.”
For the 2022-2023 season, the zone finals were held at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. There, Cunningham placed first in the Individual Limit Equitation On The Flat, which qualified her for nationals. According to Cunningham, Limit Equitation On The Flat is part of the “Hunt Seat” and includes evaluating the rider’s positioning and how the rider and horse work in tandem.
At nationals, Cunningham placed first out of 16 competitors in Individual Limit Equitation On The Flat making her the first athlete at Maryville College to achieve a national title beating out riders from Mount Holyoke College to the University of Wisconsin.
“It was a great way to tie a bow at the end of my college years, and it’s pretty cool that it is Maryville College’s first national championship,” she said.
Cunningham explained that “her coach, Christen Khym, and professors gave [her] the confidence to succeed in everything from riding to academics to life.”
“The unique thing about MC is that you get to be very close with your professors,” she said. “Through my time attending MC and getting to know the professors and working with them on my senior thesis, I found the confidence needed to apply to graduate school. In fact, I would say the professors, along with my mom and all of my coaches, are my biggest role models.”
