Exceptional Turnout for Weekend of EQ Vaulting Fun & Learning

Vaulting Queensland’s Development weekend held at Byron Bay Equestrian Centre 2-3 December proved to be a great all-inclusive learning success. 

The weekend focussed on the development of our equestrian sport by equipping our Qld vaulting community with the skills required to organise, support and run vaulting events and covered all aspects of competition & training including pencilling, scoring, judging, gear checking, lungeing/horse training, coaching and vaulting.

It was a great opportunity to have Tristyn Lowe, an EA Level 2 Vaulting Coach & EA High Performance Coach, EA Level 3 & FEI 2* Vaulting Judge, share her extensive knowledge in many areas of our sport, successfully competing internationally for many years including WEG as a vaulter and a lunger.

The Saturday Development clinic was well attended by supporters, parents and vaulters with theory in the morning and hands on practical horse work in the afternoon.  It was great to welcome new participants and horses working together under Tristyn’s expert guidance.  We also saw our senior vaulters learning new lungeing skills with Tristyn and our more experienced vaulting horses.  It really proved to be an inclusive & interactive learning experience for everyone involved.

The Ribbon Day competition on Sunday was planned as an opportunity to showcase and practice the skills learnt over the weekend.   Multiple Qld Vaulting Clubs were represented, with over 25 vaulters competing in up to 6 classes each including Individual Compulsories and Freestyle Preliminary- Intermediate, Pas De Deux, Barrel classes and Novelty Squads. Most impressive was our very competitive A-Mature (over 35ys) vaulters class consisting of some of our coaches, parents and lungers, having a go and being such great role models for our younger vaulters. It was heart-warming also to see vaulters and new horses competing for the first time.

A BIG thank you to everyone that worked together to make a great weekend of learning.  Tristyn’s judging not only supported officials (judges, pencillors, scorers) to learn important skills but gave essential & meaningful feedback to our vaulters, coaches and lungers.  Thank you Tesse and Byron Bay Equestrian Centre for your hospitality and excellent facilities.  A big call out goes to all the parents, supporters, canteen, event co-ordinator, announcer, music co-ordinator (computer tech extraordinaire!!) pencillors, scorers, lungers, coaches, horses and vaulters that freely gave their time to develop our awesome sport. Thank you to absent members for last minute calculation of scores via email for our Annual Participant Award presentations.  We wish we could name you all personally but we’re sure you all know who you are and hope you understand what an important role you play in supporting our sport.

What a great way to celebrate vaulting for 2017 and here’s to a great future of growth for Qld Equestrian Vaulting in 2018.