Caroline Hobbs as the Masked Rider atop Centennial Champion.
Everything faded away that bright September day, except for the hoofbeats of her horse thundering down the football field.
It was the Texas Tech football debut for black quarter horse Centennial Champion and 61st Masked Rider Caroline Hobbs.
They’d trained for the famed mascot run down the length of the field for the season-opener against Murray State.
Related story: Horses help people heal ‘body, mind and spirit’ in Lubbock equine therapy center
“You can truly never know what it’s like until you do it,” Hobbs told LubbockLights.com.
“Nothing can prepare you for it. Every rider says the stadium goes dark and silent and it really does. It was so iconic and so surreal.”
She remembered the initial fanfare, getting down the field to the north end zone — those hoofbeats, making sure the football team was still behind them, putting her Guns Up and smiling.
One of the Tech veterinarians, Caitlyn Wagner, told Hobbs she did it.
“And I’m like, what? I did?”
Tech won 63-10 in head coach Joey McGuire’s debut – Sept. 3, 2022.
It was her favorite football game in a year of many firsts and 303 events — rodeos, parades and visits with kids at elementary schools.
She especially enjoyed visiting children, because “they could be future Masked Riders.”
“It was the best year of my life. Centennial was my best friend and I still love him,” she said.
Before the game, she coached Centennial, telling him step-by-step how it would go: He just had to take a few pictures with fans. Get a drink of water. Take a run down the football field.
“I was giving him little squeezes,” she said, so he knew they were both OK. “I was training a horse and still using therapy.”
Hobbs, 24, has continued coaching horses and clients in her work at Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy center in south Lubbock, where her title is team lead instructor.
‘She’s gifted with horses’
But Centennial Champion will always have a piece of her heart. That year she spent most of her time with him, often eating and studying in his stall.
Hobbs took him home on school holidays.
She also got to work with Centennial’s predecessor, Fearless Champion, for two months.
Stephanie Rhode, Texas Tech’s Spirit Program Director, said Hobbs was a wonderful Masked Rider.
Hobbs had extra work because of the two horses, especially training a new horse for the role. It was July before Centennial Champion came to Tech.
“She did an admirable job. She’s gifted with horses. Centennial was a hard guy to get on board,” Rhode said.
It takes a special horse to be part of the Masked Rider duo.
“Horses are not accustomed to a stadium. It’s an extreme situation for them. It’s remarkable to think we have a student do all that — and on a new horse,” Rhode said.
Guns, fireworks, football players and fans add up to extra stress for the horse.
Anyone who remembers that first run, recalls Centennial was a little reluctant when the fanfare first started, Rhode said. He seemed as if he was having second thoughts.
It takes a special horse person to pull it off, adding Caroline exhibited all the talent, ability and grace she’s seen in the 23 Masked Riders she’s coached through her career at Tech.
“All Masked Riders are the very best students. They always rise to the occasion.”
Rhode remembers Caroline as an “empathetic soul,” glad she’s found a place in equine-assisted therapy.
Hobbs said she was glad for everything her year as Masked Rider taught her.
“As a rider you know your time will come to an end and I prepared myself,” she said.
Hobbs and Centennial took an early-morning ride around campus before the Transfer of the Reins ceremony, April 21, 2023, when Lauren Bloss became her successor.
Horses have phenomenal memories, she said. Sometimes, Centennial whinnies when he sees or hears Hobbs. And she gets to see him in the football stadium.
“I’m always there (at games) screaming my head off,” said Hobbs.
Equine-assisted therapy major (and family) made Tech right fit
Among many reasons Hobbs chose Texas Tech is the Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources offers an undergraduate degree in equine-assisted therapy. That was her major with a minor in American Sign Language.
Her parents are also alumni as are many other family members.
“My whole family went to Tech. Out of our entire family, only two people did not go to Tech.”
Hobbs is from Dallas, although she and her parents resettled in Lubbock.
Along with her childhood dreams of being a Masked Rider at Texas Tech, Hobbs wanted to be an equine therapist, because she understood the healing power of horses from an early age. She started riding as a 3-year-old.
“Being Masked Rider was a lifelong goal,” she said.
Hobbs and her dad often watched televised Tech football games — with the Masked Rider galloping to open the game.
From the time she was 10 until she was 13 years old, she began going with her horse trainer and riding coach to the special-needs classes at a Dallas-area middle school and high school.
“We would haul horses into the high school, so that’s my start with equine-assisted therapy. We taught the kids how to groom and walk the horses in the class. We did that about once a month for a couple of years,” Hobbs said.
She could see how the horses helped the students.
“Horses can feel everything. I like to say they are mirrors. They mirror what you feel. They mirror what you do, how you hold yourself. So if you come in scared, they are going to be scared, even if they are doing something they’ve done a thousand times. Horses just know,” she said.
As she got older Hobbs continued working with horses: “I kept riding, kept showing, competing, breaking horses and working for breeders until I graduated high school.”
Along with her work at Refuge Services she has her own horse business, Collinear Equestrian off University in Lubbock, where she trains horses, instructs riders and has other horse-related services. In her stables, she also keeps a half-dozen personal horses, including a couple of fosters, she said.
Working with Refuge Services
Hobbs became acquainted with the work at Refuge Services through her fiancé, Zane Wall. And she met Patti and Randy Mandrell, Refuge Services founders, when the young couple attended the center’s annual fundraiser, Boots and Buckles Benefit, held in April.
It’s the kind of family connection story that happens in Lubbock.
Wall’s father was on the center’s board of directors and a lifelong friend of Randy Mandrell.
Zane grew up with Mandrell’s sons, Brady and Wyatt, volunteering at Refuge Services and working with horses there.
So that spring night about five years ago in the Texas Tech Frazier Alumni Pavilion, Hobbs seized a chance to talk to Patti Mandrell.
“I walked right up to Patti and said my major is equine-assisted therapy, are y’all hiring?”
Mandrell remembered that conversation, “I said, we need to talk.” They scheduled an interview and Hobbs got the job.
She’s been there ever since, except for the year she was Masked Rider.
“I call myself the horse and person liaison,” Hobbs said, adding just as all humans are unique, so are horses. Finding the best match between clients and horses lead to more beneficial therapy.
Masked Riders stay close
Hobbs and Wall plan to marry in March, with two other Masked Riders, Ashley Adams, the 60th, and Cameron Hekkert, the 59th, as bridesmaids. As far as Hobbs knows she is the only equine-assisted therapist in the group.
“We have a photographer, a lawyer, a vet and a chiropractor. And an auctioneer. We all stay really close,” Hobbs said.
The group of Masked Riders recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of the creation of the mascot.
“You spend a lot of time together. We have been together for lots of miles.”
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