Monthly Archives: April 2012

Our Recognized Event season is just about to start and I hope everyone has had a chance to get out and do some cross-country schooling and also participate in one of our great Clinics, One Day Events, or Derbies that are taking place this spring. NWEC is our kickoff Event and is only weeks away.  Let’s all do a little dance for some good weather shinning down on us for the first big competition weekend.

We have some exciting developments happening course-wise at Aspen Farms and Caber Farm.  Jonathan and Suzy Elliott are building an Advanced course for their fall Event in 2012 at Aspen.  John and Cindy Camlin are also in the process of planning and building an Advanced track for their Caber Farm Event in 2013.  These are monumental efforts at every juncture and they will be our second and third Advanced courses in Area VII.  Rebecca Farm has been our leader at this level and has set a wonderful precedent.  Currently, the next closest Advanced course is in Area VI at Woodside, CA, a seventeen hour drive from the Seattle area.   Along with these new tracks being planned and built, Equestrians’ Institute is also working to get their Beginning Novice through Preliminary courses at the Washington State Horse Park, up and running for 2013 and have had a major fundraising effort going on for quite some time.  Both Aspen and Caber are looking into signing up with the American Horse Trials Foundation, which is a 501C.  Course donations would then be tax deductible.  We will keep you posted when this becomes official. These new courses put Area VII at a whole new level and we need to lend support, in any way we can, to all of our Area VII Event Organizers, who strive to upgrade and enhance existing competition courses with their own funds and sweat equity.  Without this increasingly rare group of farms and horse parks that are made available for our competitions, there would be no sport of Eventing left.  Our Area VII Membership has passed the 400 mark so I know there is more we can do to help support our Organizers!

The other news is that Northwest Sport Horse Breeders’ Association is featuring a Future Event Horse section at their annual Breed Show taking place at Donida Farm, Friday August 24^th in the afternoon.  They are very excited to include FEH breeders along with the Dressage Sport Horse Breed Show.  The FEH division is open to Yearlings through Three Year olds, all shown in hand. This is a wonderful opportunity to show off your young stock.  With this show, we now have three FEH Breed shows in Area VII, including Rebecca Farm and Stanton Farm, and you can now qualify for the FEH Western Championships without traveling out of our region. Many of you in our Area are breeding some fantastic young horses and they are as nice as anything out there in any of the other Sport Horse groups. 

Here is the link for upcoming information:  http://www.nwshba.com/

I hope everyone gets off to a great start this season. 

Melissa Beardsley

Young Riders Report

Spring, which means that the event season in the Northwest is just around the corner and everyone is gearing up for a great 2012 season.   The first show is sneaking up on us with the May Classic at the Northwest Equestrian Center.  This year we will have a developing rider team at this event.  You will have to watch your stall doors to know if you have been selected.  There will be great prizes!  With the beginning of the show season also brings the Annual Young Rider Summer Camp, the dates for this great camp are June 26^th-29^th at the lovely Aspen Farms in Yelm, WA.  This year there will be four awesome coaches with extensive backgrounds in our sport.  Hawley Bennet-Awad, Jean Moyer, Jonathan Elliot, and Jessica Heidemann will all be teaching over the three days of camp.

Even though our season is just beginning many other areas have already been running since January and many of our NAJYRC candidates have been hard at work training and showing.   Maria Schatz, Ashlynn Meuchel, and Brigit Rossbach are the candidates for the one star team.  Lizzie Snow, Helen Bouscaren, and Florence Miller are the two star candidates.  All of the candidates have been training with the best trainers out there and showing extensively to get their qualifications and experience at the upper levels.   Maria, Ashlynn, Brigit, Lizzie, Helen, and Florence are all looking forward to competing at the Kentucky Horse Park and representing the Area VII team at NAJYRC.  Good luck to all of the candidates!!

Brynn

We have updated membership through the end of April and added the Young Riders Members as an additional group.  If you haven’t renewed with USEA and/or joined Adult Riders or Young Riders, NOW is the time!

Jordan and Jack jumping into first water complex at Rolex.

There are some lovely pictures from Amy’s memorial on her Team Tryon website. We also hope to get some photos from Rolex when they honor Amy this Friday.

http://www.teamtryon.com/

From Penny Leggott:

EI Schooling Show and Hunter Pace at the Horse Park

The closing date for the Schooling Show is fast approaching on May 6^th!!  This is a gentle reminder to get your entries in.

Come and have fun and get ready for the show season!  And come and see the changes at the Park: the new hospitality tent, the fence around the big arena, and the developments in the Derby Field!

FRIDAY – 2-6pm

Jump schooling on practice course; Hopeful to Prelim levels

Dressage Lessons with Debbie DeWitt – limited spaces; contact secretary for details    SATURDAY – CT for lower levels	MOTHERS’ DAY SUNDAY – CT for upper levels
Hopeful/BN/Novice Dressage, start 8 am	Novice, Training & Prelim Dressage, start 8:30am
Hopeful/BN/ Novice Jumping, start 10am	Novice, Training & Prelim Jumping, start 9:30am
Hunter Pace – All Day	Hunter Pace – 9am to 2pm
Jump Schooling Hopeful to Training	Jump Schooling Novice to Prelim FINAL ENTRY FORM MAY 2012.pdf 477K   View   Download

We have added the EventEntries site link to our Homepage at the bottom of column one on the right.  This is such an easy way to fill out your entry forms and store all the pertinent information for you and your horse(s). It is free and very easy to sign up if you are new to their services.  Our show season is just about to fire up so get those entries in early!

The sun broke through the clouds and streamed into MapleLeaf/Upson Downs arena as the lilting music of Eastside Fire & Rescue Pipes and Drums started off the memorial service for Amy Tryon, held on April 20th in Duvall, WA.  Several hundred mourners attended the service including all of Amy’s family, many in the horse community, and Eastside Fire and Rescue members and several other station crews that Amy worked with during her EMT days.  Fire Lieutenant Richard Burke, who served closely with both Amy and Greg Tryon in the Fire Service, led off the eulogies and gave great support throughout the memorial to everyone who chose to speak.

It was an emotional day filled with great stories and remembrances about Amy.  Greg spoke with humor and grace about his incredible experiences of being Amy’s horse husband and getting introduced as Mr. Amy Tryon as they traveled the world to the major equestrian Events she was competing in.  They made many friends around the world and they will continue to be there to help Greg move forward without Amy.  Amy’s mother Jemi, told the story of Amy going to her first horse show as a young girl, competing in Western Equitation in a pink outfit purchased by a family friend.  Amy came in fifth and the judge thought she would be pleased to get the pink 5th place ribbon but she told the judge “I wanted the blue ribbon!”.  Jemi knew she was in trouble after the first show and that her ambitious horse-crazed daughter would pursue her equestrian dreams and never look back.  She also wanted people to know that behind the sometimes tough and gruff facade, Amy was very shy and at times, fragile.  She kept any problems she had to herself and carried on, lending guidance and support to those that needed her help, encouraging young girls who wanted to ride to do it right and do your chores!

Dr. Mark Hart, an early sponsor of Amy and Poggio, spoke about his travels with Amy and her crew across the country, up and down, and those were some of his best memories.  He also attended many of her major competitions and saw first hand the amazing string of successes Amy and Poggy had.  But it was on the backside that he remembers most fondly.  Watching Amy put her horse show crew to work, a very well-oiled machine and being put to work himself on tasks he wasn’t so well versed in.  Everyone had a laugh before they told him how to do the job correctly.  She was a loyal friend and always there for his family when they needed her.

David O’Conner choked back his emotions as he struggled to talk about Amy.  He got to know her quite well when they were on two Olympic Teams together and one WEG team.  If Amy was on the team they usually won and her integrity as a rider, teammate, and friend was unquestionable.  David spent a night traveling by train with Amy, trying to get to the Olympic village in Spain after missing their connection in Madrid.  ” We played Truth or Dare almost the whole way and she probably knows more about me than most people but I knew I could always trust her with my secrets.  I wasn’t prepared to lose her so soon  but I know she is up there somewhere, galloping across a field jumping huge jumps with no dressage arena in sight”.

Richard Burke spoke for the Fire Service and conveyed what a huge loss Amy was to the firefighting community.  She was nicknamed “Tulip” early on by one of her crews and it stayed with her during her entire career.  She was a first-class EMT and firefighter until she retired in 2006 to pursue her equestrian career full-time. It was a powerful, moving and comforting feeling to see all the Fire Service members in dress uniforms, form a shoulder to shoulder ring around the seated crowd while everyone spoke.  A heartfelt thank you goes out to all of them for organizing, arranging, and executing a very special memorial for Amy and all of her family.

Alison Green, Amy’s friend, groom, and fellow rider, who worked with her for thirteen years,  said it beautifully while speaking from the audience, “For Amy, all the awards and prizes she won throughout her career just weren’t that important.  It was always about the journey and how she got there.  I would like everyone to remember that”.

Keep on riding Amy…….

Claudia Morgan

“IN FOND MEMORY OF AMY”

From everyone at Twin Rivers Horse Trials

Sent to us by Anni Grandia