I am always pleased when members write about their experiences and the fact that Sienna has also written about the Mounted Games Team’s visit to the Pony Club Championships in addition to Ace is a lovely bonus. As they explain, Sienna and Ace have both become to old to compete again next year; they have done us proud!
Mike
Pony Club Championships 2011
2011, another year Southdown East has qualified to the PPC Pony club championships, and ever since 2006 when we first qualified it’s been a great success every year, and 2011 was no different!!
After qualifying from the Area 11 PPC competition on the 22nd May our pony club mounted games team, made up of me, Sienna Howell, Finbarr Blair, Ace Robins, Rosanna Curtis and Finley Walsh were on our way to the zones, although with 10 new races to practise it was back to square one.
After a lot of practising and a lot of encouragement from our trainer Katy Pheasant, we were ready for the zones on the 2nd July. Unfortunately our team got off to a disappointing start, and it took us almost the rest of the competition to get back on track, however we all pulled through with a lot of hard work as a team, and got ourselves a respectful 10th place qualifying for the intermediate championships.
Thankfully, all the races were the same for the championships, so practising consisted of polishing off little details, and after another month we were off to the pony club championships for the 6th year running! With it being at Draycott house in Derbyshire. We drove up on Sunday 14th August to stay overnight and to hopefully get a good night sleep before the competition started at 10:45 on the Monday morning, although I think the camping is the children and parents favourite bit! So once ponies were sorted ( by the mums mainly ) with corralls, feeds, rugs etc we were all made to sit down talk tactics and clean tack… no course we didn’t! All parents sat down with a drink and sent Mrs Lee to get a take away, whilst us kids ran around enjoying ourselves playing football, chatting, playing cards, laughing and having some team bonding time! Sadly the evening came to an end when Mrs. Lee (our team trainer for the weekend) sent us all to bed.
Everyone was up bright and early feeding, cleaning and tacking up ponies, and once we were all ready we headed off to tack and turnout whilst still clean! Eventually after a bit of waiting around the competition started with the tack and turnout placing, which surprisingly we weren’t placed in! But with our parents watching at the side lines, along with the one member of our fan club Helen Waters (who has been a committed member for several years!) The competition finally got under way with Sue Lee taking the roll as our team trainer as well as the guv’ nor and making sure we were there in the first heat of bending, which went perfectly getting us into the first final, and things continued that way with us making every final, until it came to ball and bucket which we sadly didn’t make the final for, but running 2nd meant we had to keep working hard! And with that and big sack being the only races we didn’t make the final for meant we came a pleasing 3rd overall, and we were happy with that considering Finbarr managed to do a successful vault, Ace kept smiling, Finley didn’t make a mistake, and Rosanna and I kept the boys in shape!
And another year at the championships came to an end, and a final end for me and Ace, with this being their last year, but we got some memorable pictures and hoodies and went home with great rosettes and memories as a team !!!
We would all like to thank Katy for her hard work and commitment as our trainer, I will really miss her! Also Sue Lee who has supported, organised and always been there for all the PPC teams.
By Sienna Howell