By Dan Roark
Claire and I were talking during one of the two Denton Riding Club Playdays in which New Hope riders participated. She was telling Cyndy and I about her team competing in Horse Judging events through FFA at school. I thought it would make a great post and asked her to write it down and send it to me. Claire began as a rider in this little universe we call New Hope. Now she owns Sierra, who is training to be a therapy horse, and is planning a career around horses. Just one of the marvelous stories that unfold at New Hope.
What follows is what Claire sent me (albeit with grammatical edits).
“Horse judging is a part of Future Farmers Of America (FFA). It is called a Career Development Event (CDE). It is my favorite because I love horses, want to learn more, and want to make that into my career. For the last couple months my team and I have been practicing every Wednesday to get prepared for upcoming contests.
Horse judging can be very complicated and competitive as there are lots of teams and it is all based on what the judge thinks. You have 7 to 8 classes depending on the college. Some are Performance under saddle classes and some halter. When judging performance classes it’s all based on how the rider and horse work together while halter classes are just based on how the horse is structured and what it looks like.
We have had four total invitational CDEs (any team from across the state can participate). The first competition was a little rough because everyone on my team had never done Horse Judging. The second, third, and fourth competition went really well!! I placed first out of my team each day but we all did amazing and improved each day! Clarendon college was by far our best day. We got 11th out of 66 teams and I got 3rd out of 219 people! Area at Tarleton is super soon! If we place good there we get to go to state at Texas Tech!!”
The team did very well at Tarleton, but did not place well enough to go to state at Texas Tech. But they will have another chance next year and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they made it to state quite easily!
Ride on and ride for hope.
Great post! I can see her excelling on the Texas Tech judging team some day.