It seems like a millennia ago now, but Lauren and I were teammates on the Area 8 YR team in '05 and '06. The team in '06 was stacked--we had one Rolex horse, Bru McGuire, two future Rolex horses in Lauren Kieffer's Snooze Alarm and Hannah Burnett's Keep the Faith, and my horse was a XC machine. To make a long story short, everyone on our team had high hopes, but by the time I started on course we already had two throw-out scores. I'm glad that Holly, our coach, didn't tell me because I doubt I would have gotten around clean if I had known that we were out of the team competition. Looking back, I was never that rider who was fanatically excited about Young Riders. I always looked at Young Riders as just another three-day, but I did really enjoy being a part of a great team and having my score matter for more than just the individual result.
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O Young Rider's Championships, where to begin... well I guess technically that's not what it is called, it's the NAJYRC..LNOPQYRST. It's been adding letters for as long as I have done it. I competed at the NAJYRC three years in a row, '05, '06, and '07, and it was basically an epic fail, but I don't regret a minute of it and took away a huge amount of life experience. The whole process is a great experience for Young Rider's whether you are just doing it for the fun of it or whether you want to go on to be a professional. Some of my closest friends were made during the camps, training sessions, and competitions, and we are still close today. Here are a few tips I can pass down to you going to your first NAJYRC or looking to go in the future.
As an aside, I still tell the story about Bru McGuire being the only horse I have ever seen trot over the drop into the Head of the Lake at Rolex. I was back in the vet box watching the live feed and all of the riders started to freak out, but, honestly, it never seemed like a bad strategy to me. There's no way that horse was going to stop and it prevented him from running at the log. But I digress.
Lauren was kind enough to take a trip down memory lane and send in a few words of advice for this year's Yong Riders. Thanks for writing this Lauren and thank you for reading.Young Riders '10 starts today at the Kentucky Horse Park, where a new set of memories will be made by a new group of talented young riders. Please be sure to check out our new question of the week, which is about Young Riders. Links: CH-Y** entries, CH-J* entries, NAYRC Blog
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Lauren at YR '07
1. Plan ahead. I have known way too many people who decided they wanted to do NAJYRC but didn't do their research into qualifications and in the end couldn't go. Or just counted on doing it at the last minute and missed out because of a silly runout at one of their qualifying runs. If considering going to Young Riders at all in the future make a schedule and go over it with your area's Chef d'equipe or Coach, even if you don't know them yet that is what they are here for, just shoot them an email ask their opinion.
2. Use your area's camps and training session to your full advantage. Even if you are several years from being ready for Young Rider's go watch and get to know and understand the process.
3. Talk to your area's Chefs and Coach. For a lot of us from smaller areas the NAJYRC is really our first experience with jogs, qualifications, CICs, and CCIs. Take advantage of your Coach's professional experience and ask questions, nothing is worse then going into it all without a clue, trust me, I was clueless my first year and it just makes it that much more confusing, they are there to help you.
4. Be a team player. Stick together and help each other out.
5. Last but not least, Enjoy it! I have so many memories from NAJYRC and very few of them are from the actual competition, of course that could just be me wanting to forget haha. It's most of our first experience with being on a team and you would be amazed how close you can become by the end of the week with people that were merely acquaintances at the beginning. Of course maybe in my teams case it was more of a bond formed by a vow of secrecy to never confess to all the pranks we pulled....
I just don't get Area 3 young riders. It's the total opposite of what a program should be which is developing young talent. Instead it's cost prohibitive and inefficient. They always claim that the clinicians are donating their time for the camps as well as the facility's. Then why does it cost several times more than what normal lessons do with the same clinicians? Not to mention the cost of actually competing on the team, again several times over what it costs to compete on your own. When I asked for cost breakdowns, I got more runaround stories than congress on healthcare! must be the democratic nature in them.