Walk-Ons Strengthen SMU Teams

From her first pony ride at age 8, Betina Matoni was smitten with horses. For the captain of the SMU equestrian team, however, finding the opportunities to continue her passion was more challenging.

When she was 5, Matoni and her family immigrated to the United States from Romania because of its political turmoil and settled in Richardson, Texas. As a teenager, Matoni mucked out stables, worked at children’s riding camps and exercised horses in exchange for riding lessons and the opportunity to compete. She delayed her dream of riding competitively while attending community college for two years. When she transferred to SMU, Matoni contacted equestrian coach Jenny Passow about joining the team.

More than 400 riders each year e-mail Passow seeking one of 15 scholarships or 20 walk-on slots on the team. Passow looks for riders with experience in English riding both on the flat and jumping fences. In addition, she seeks riders with broad experience riding different horses because horses are randomly selected in college competitions.

Now a senior majoring in sociology and philosophy, Matoni made the team as a walk-on in 2005, balancing her studies, a part-time job and the demands of a collegiate sport. Quickly earning the respect of her coach and teammates, she was elected captain last fall and will compete on scholarship for the 2007-08 season.

“This is the kind of opportunity that comes around only once,” Matoni says. “All of my dreams are falling into place.”

Most coaches of SMU’s 16 varsity sports accept walk-ons. Men’s basketball coach Matt Doherty held open tryouts last fall and took five players. Women’s rowing coach Doug Wright counts on nine walk-ons to fill out his 31-member roster.

Men’s swimming coach Eddie Sinnott says that about half of the SMU team comprises walk-ons. “There are about 11 guys on our team who are not on athletic scholarship,” he says. “We have been very fortunate to have had quite a few walk-ons over the years who have made an impact on our overall success as a team.”

Coaches usually are aware of talented high school athletes coming to SMU. The term “walk-on” is a misnomer when it comes to Division I athletics, they say.

“We know our potential walk-ons before the season begins,” says football coach Phil Bennett, who accepted 27 walk-ons on his team. “They have to have a pedigree.”

Even though senior Ben Poynter’s Lamar High School football team in Arlington, Texas, lost in the 2003 playoffs, he wasn’t ready for football to be over. Poynter, who played on his junior high “B” team, spent much of his junior varsity season on the bench. A growth spurt and increased workouts led to a starting position on his high school team.

“Ben’s high school coach told us that his best football years were ahead of him,” Bennett says.

Poynter, a finance major, began his SMU walk-on football career like many first-year players – attending 6 a.m. practices as a member of the scout team. In spring practice his freshman year he earned a scholarship spot on the team and started at tackle five times his sophomore year. His junior year Poynter started every game. In 2005 and 2006 he won SMU’s Charles H. Trigg Blocking Award recognizing the top lineman.

“I tell the walk-ons, ‘You better have perseverance and patience. It could be gratifying or you could be out quickly,’” Bennett says.

At first, Betina Matoni found balancing the demands of the equestrian team with her studies “incredibly hard.” She struggled with the differences she encountered from more well-to-do riders, some who bring their own horses to SMU. Matoni lives at home and earns her own gas money to drive to the practice stable more than 20 miles from campus.

Sometimes scholarship riders have a sense of entitlement, Passow says. “When you have walk-ons like Betina, who work until they have to be pulled away, it brings everyone back to Earth. Betina leads through example by putting her nose to the ground and working.”

Men’s soccer coach Schellas Hyndman also has special admiration for walk-ons. About 30 players try to walk on to the men’s soccer team each year, says Hyndman, who has 9.9 scholarships to distribute among a 26-man roster. When the team competed in the NCAA tournament last fall, 80 percent of the players on the field were walk-ons.

“In 30 years of coaching I’ve learned that the player who walks on wants to be there a little more,” he says. “They are happy to be at the institution they chose and then to add soccer to that. They appreciate the uniforms, the shoes and your time as a coach.”

As a child traveling with her family, Katie Leonard would see collegiate soccer teams in their matching uniforms pass by in airports. “I want to do that someday,” she thought.

A sophomore walk-on on the women’s soccer team, Leonard loves road trips, especially her first visit to Florida last fall. The SMU midfielder played club soccer for eight years in Portland, Oregon, and served as captain of her high school team. Her club team won the state tournament in 2005. Although Division III teams recruited her, she wanted to try out for Division I. She came to SMU a few weeks before her freshman year to try out for the team, earning a spot.

Leonard, who has started a few times, recently learned that she will be a scholarship player in the fall. “I absolutely love it – soccer, the team camaraderie, the whole experience of being a college athlete.”

– Nancy Lowell George (’79)