Talygarn Team Show Jumping

I left the indoor school at around 10.30  last night after getting the course ready for the Talyarn team show jumping and the rain was hammering down and running down the lane in a river, just what we need for show jumping!! The day started early and surprisingly dry, with 32 teams from Talygarn, Mynydd RC, LlangeinorPC, Glamorgan PC and Millbrook RC to get through we needed the first one in at 9am and to be fair to Llangeinor, the first drawn team, they were there on the dot. The class ran smoothly although I did see a few kids fall off but the prize for the best fall has to go to Sarah Blake who fell whilst leading Marianne on Lucky, Sarah jumped the first fence leading the pony, stumbled, staggered several strides then fell flat on her face letting the pony go. (There will be a public showing on the CCTV on Saturday). My first problem came when opening the box with the team prizes in to find the suppliers had only sent me 7 hat and boot bags instead of 16 but the winners were all ok about it and hopefully they will receive the rest of they’re prizes tomorrow. I rang the suppliers who informed me that they had only charged me for 7 to which I replied ‘but you knew I needed 16′ and they said the problem was their wharehouse didn’t always tell their computer when they had run out and sometimes they think they have things when really they haven’t. I didn’t know what to say – so much for modern technology. The next problem came with the prize for the series winner. I had advertised on the schedule that there would be prizes to the winning team (not teams) of the points from the series. The first class are very young and as I had a few spare items I decided to give the 2nd team a consolation prize, well I have to say I wish I hadn’t. The first team received their prizes and championship rosettes and the 2nd team had some small prizes. One parent complained to several people that she thought it very bad that they hadn’t received rosettes as well as she had supported the jumping through all 4 shows and thought the winning team had received too much and presumably their team should have had more and rosettes. I think people need to realise that we are not a charity or a club and we do not have sponsors we have to make money out of what we do and as a business I think we give a lot back. There are few clubs let alone businesses paying out for the amount of Rosettes, Sashes Prizes, medals etc that we do and unlike most clubs our staff are not working out of the goodness of their hearts although to be fair they are very good and if it wasn’t for some people that give their time willingly we wouldn’t be able to run it at all. The third problem came with the outdoor school, too many kids are using the outdoor school to race around in and they should only be in there if they are warming up for their class, consequently Sophie who was riding for Talygarn and has only recently bought her horse who was alarmed and Sophie fell off injuring her leg and was unable to compete and it was Sophie’s birthday.  At one point I even had to turf kids out of the fields who had thought it would be a good idea to take their horses in there and jump the cross country fences. The 4th problem was quite amusing. There is a woodland area to the left of the school which has had some machinery in there lately and has left it rather muddy and churned up, several children decided this would be a good play area and when I spotted them they were covered in mud one had lost her boots and I had visions of them sinking up to their waists in mud. All the classes ran very well with Talygarn picking up quite a few places. A Big Congratulations must go the Glamorgan Pony Club Teams who were the overall points winners in every class. On the whole it was a good day and even though team jumping takes a lot of organising I think its well worth it especially to see how well some of the kids have come on through the series.  The weather held out and it was great not to be finishing in the dark even though it was 8pm. The next series will start in October this year and I hope there are a few teams out there planning to give Glamorgan a run for their money. Pictures are on the Gallery ( Sorry about he 2′6 pics there wasn’t enough light but if anyone has any e mail them to me and I will add them)

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Posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 1:39 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.