Sonja Johnson is very proud of the eventers in Western Australia who took matters into their own hands and ran Little Brigadoon. She tells us that ...........
The future of eventing in WA looks to be in good hands
Every so often something happens in our wonderful sport of eventing that gladdens your heart and makes you think that our sport does have a future. The weekend of the 6-7 April was the culmination of a June 2012 conversation that resulted in one of those moments for WA eventing.
Back in June last year Felicity Hegarty known to all her friends as Flea (due to enormous height … not) a young 20 year old Uni student, had a conversation with her mum Karon about how, on the whole, events were run in WA by a group of mostly older people and that the new generation of riders were not sticking their hands up to learn how to do it. After this chat Flea set out to convince other riders of her age group that they really should step up and do something about it.
Flea managed in her task and under the banner of Eventing Promotions WA (who run three events in WA) a committee was formed with Flea as Chair and the decision to run Little Brigadoon was made.
The aim in the first year was to just run EvA65 and EvA80. They thought that this way they would be able to do it easily and the low (they hoped) numbers would make it easy. They didn’t count on how popular the idea would be and they suddenly discovered they had 200 entries!
Tegan Lush and Andrew Schmitt put up sponsors signs
So on a warm weekend they set to the task. It was wonderful to see riders like Tegan Lush out decorating the cross country course having already flagged it. When the TD (Phoebe Johnson – Sonja’s mum) stopped for a chat. Tegan said ‘this is rather fun’. Then come Saturday morning Makayla Woods was definitely doing her bit for the image of the sport as she answered queries and handed out numbers. I am sure a number of blokes kept coming back just for another dose of the Macca smile!
You knew that Katie Klem had done a fabulous job running the dressage side of things when a notice went up on face book with a comment from one judge ‘had a lovely day judging dressage at Little Brigadoon Eventing … What a well run day it was, very impressive.’
Makalya Woods welcomed people with a smile
Michaela Martindale managed to not only run the show jumping but also ride to win a class on a young horse. Lizzy Moore was riding and working, as was Carley Robbins. While Sarah Hickson and Rebecca Williams were also there quietly getting the job done.
I did think to myself how well many of these young ladies had picked their boyfriends as even though the boyfriends who don’t appear on the committee list were certainly hard at work supporting the women in their lives (thanks guys).
The prizegiving meant more than just handing out ribbons
Using facebook as my guide again and looking at the positive comments on the Future Eventing page and talking to the committee who next year plan to run to EvA105 then eventually find a venue where they can create a whole new EA event to 3* level, I really think that eventing in WA can pride its self on the fact that we have a future.
The event had eight classes but this was an event where it wasn’t just first place in each class who won but the whole sport of eventing. WELL DONE YOU MOB. You were great.
Sonja
