SSMDTA is excited about the amount of teams that are participating in the drill classes this year and are very excited about the up-and-coming Youth Riders that are learning to ride while doing drill at the same time.
The Youth Beginners class was a last minute addition to the schedule for the 2024 show year as we weren’t sure how much interest there would be in a class catered towards riders that are new to horses as well as drill. The class had several entries at the February competition and those riders want to do more at the next show.
So, we have made “Beginners” its own division like Novice, Youth and Open and at the remaining shows Freestyle, Quad and Theme classes will be offered. For the teams that participated in the February competition, we are counting that class as Beginners Freestyle.
What makes Beginners different than Youth?
The Beginners class is for our newer Youth riders, but we are allowing 2 adults to ride with them as needed for leaders and safety reasons. This class is only Walk/Trot. (The regular Youth classes only allow 1 adult and are Walk/Trot/Canter.)
All 3 classes (Freestyle, Quad and Theme) will have a 3-5 minute time limit to make it easier for you to run the same drill in all 3 classes (but you’re welcome to change up your drills in each class – totally up to you).
The Beginners Theme class will dress up (costume) at all remaining shows. Beginners Freestyle and Quad will only dress up (costume) at the State Championships in November.
We want to have these young riders to focus on their horses and their drill so flags and props are NOT allowed in the Beginners Division. We are also removing the the Inside/Outside Coaching Penalty for this Division in the interest of safety.
The Handbook has been updated and is available on the website or you can click here. Pages 19 – 21 give all the details for the Beginners Division classes.
We are adding these classes at this time in order to encourage our future riders and to give them additional classes to showcase what they’ve been working on so long. However, if we don’t have at least 2 teams in each class, we will either cancel or combine the class(es) with only 1 entry.
If you have any questions about these additional classes, please have your coach post them in the WhatsApp group so we can answer in a format for all teams to see the questions and answers.
We look forward to seeing our future drill team riders compete throughout the year and hope these additional classes will help.
