KMT: IEA Show

IEA stands for Interscholastic Equestrian Association which was "formed and organized to promote and improve the quality of equestrian competition and instruction available to middle and secondary school students."

KMT has an IEA team and held their annual Regional show today! It was a LONG day but a lot of great energy and fun!

I was assigned the role of rider/ handler of one of our awesome lesson horses Cocoa. As a handler I needed to make sure Cocoa was tacked up and ready for his classes, help assigned rider get on, and retrieve him when the classes were over.

As I rider I got to hop on this morning and "show" him to all the IEA riders. Horses are drawn for classes and the assigned rider gets two warm up fences and then goes into the ring and does a show round that is judged. Keep in mind that most of these riders have not ridden the horse before and are then being asked to jump a course of 8 fences- talk about intimidating!

So before the classes begin, the horses go in by division height and are ridden through the course so the riders can see how the horse goes. Cocoa was participating in the two foot division- so I, having never ridden him myself, had the delightful task of cantering a course in front of a gaggle of teenagers.
Most embarrassing moment? Forgetting to pull my right stirrup down, conveniently the side facing the crowd, so that when I mounted I had to awkwardly pull it down while pretending that I was just super en vogue.

Anyway- Cocoa was a superstar the whole day- from making me look like an awesome rider through our warm up course to accommodating me when I tacked him up on three different occasions!

Cocoa and Rolex say "not again!"

My bud for the day!

Cocoa and I- in action!

Waiting to draw horses- a sea of black and tan!

Ellie enjoyed rolling in the mud!

This video pretty much sums up how the day felt!