Schooling Show Ponderings With Some Math

Nothing is going on here. I haven't been able to ride since lesson on Monday because I had to return my trial saddles Tuesday, Mother Nature decided to become nasty and dump over an inch of rain on us Wednesday and become a spiteful windy beetch on Thursday, and hopefully tonight I will be selling my extra car. So Penn has had 4 days off this week, coming up to a show. Yay. Well I'll ride him tomorrow, he'll be a bit freaky and tense (for him), and then we'll haul off to a show 2.5 hours away on Sunday. Always an adventure.

I got our ride times yesterday- I ride Training 1 at 11:30 and Training 2 at 11:48. E rides Novice A at 2:00, Novice B at 2:12, Training A at 2:24.

Hopefully this is improved enough for training level.

I think I'm going to sleep over at the farm Saturday night in Trainer's LQ trailer. Husband and I will be at a Halloween party about 20 min from the farm that night, so instead of driving a half hour home to drive 45 min back to the farm at the butt crack of dawn, it makes sense to sleep over at the farm. Also, it only makes sense to hook up my trailer in the dark, on Halloween, by myself, in the middle of nowhere, then crawl into a trailer and go to sleep. Umm, yea, that's kind of spooky, haha. But besides that, if I sleep at home, I have to wake up at 4:30 to be at the farm by 6 to feed and hook up. If I sleep at the farm, I can roll out of bed at 6 and go feed the horses in my pajamas and then crawl back into the trailer to get dressed for the show. I'm leaning towards that 6am wake up time! Plus I bet it'll a better quality sleep because I always sleep better in that trailer than at a hotel or my own bed. No idea why. But I'm driving us on Sunday so quality sleep sounds good.

Now here's the thing, I don't know if this show does ribbons and placings, because based on how the schedule goes, the classes aren't running in class order. Like, all of Training 1 doesn't ride one right after another. It's almost like it's a true schooling situation: show up, ride your tests, pick up your test papers, go home. I WANT RIBBONS.

Speaking of ribbons, Penn and I have to bring our game faces because there's 16 people riding Training 1 and 16 riding Training 2, and I assume since there's no class numbers listed that we're all being lumped together (Pros, AA, Jr), if there's even ribbons at all. Let me repeat, I WANT RIBBONS.

Since there's been discussion lately about recognized vs schooling shows, I thought I would take a quick glance at the competition because well, I am super competitive and super nosy. I wanted to know approximately how many riders in my two classes have competed at recognized shows. I did quick searches on Centerline Scores of the people in my two classes (amounted to 21 different riders) and I found the following:

• Only 5 of us have scores on Centerline Scores (sure, someone might be using a nickname and my brief search failed to find them).
• One is a 1st level rider, two are 2nd level riders (myself included), one is a 3rd level rider, and one smokes us all by being quite successful at Grand Prix (4* centerline rating, 48 points at Grand Prix, but only with one horse, so no 5* rating).
• Glancing at the other riders in the show, I recognize several other riders who go to recognized shows.

I'm not coming to any conclusion about what my search means placing-wise because who knows what people are bringing to ride and I have no idea what level the rest of the riders have shown successfully (60%+).

I couldn't help myself, due to the easy search tendencies of Centerline Scores and USEA Rider Lookup, I did quick searches on everyone. There were only 42 unique riders. I hope this doesn't make me too much of a stalker. Sorry. If a rider was riding a dressage test, I looked them up on Centerline Scores. If they were riding an event test, I looked them up on USEA. I didn't check the dressage riders for event results and vice versa. Had to stop somewhere. Note there was one rider who I know competes at recognized events who was riding dressage tests, I counted her.

I found that:

• Overall, 45.24% of the riders show at some kind of recognized show (USEA or USDF)
• Of the 35 riders riding dressage tests, 12 (34.29%) show at some kind of recognized show (USEA or USDF)
• Of the 9 riders riding event tests, 7 (77.78%) show at some kind of recognized show (USEA or USDF)
• Of the 23 riders who do not compete at recognized shows who are riding dressage tests, 21 (91.30%) are competing at Training and Intro level on Sunday.
• Of the 12 riders who do compete at recognized shows who are riding dressage tests, 50% are competing at First and Second level on Sunday.
• An additional note about the 12 riders above, 11 of them (91.67%) have competed at recognized shows at First Level and above successfully; 8 (66.67%) have competed at 2nd Level and above successfully.
• 90 tests are going to be ridden on Sunday.
• 20 event tests will be ridden by 9 riders.
• 70 dressage tests will be ridden by 35 riders.

I hope this isn't too much stalking. I did in in pure interest of the percentages of riders that compete at either USDF or USEA shows who also compete at schooling dressage shows. Make what you will of it.

BTW, I do fully expect the GP rider to smoke everyone in the training level class, no matter what she's sitting on!