I was a Pony Club mom back in the day, so I very enthusiastically joined a Horse Masters club four years ago. Low numbers and lack of leadership meant it only lasted one season. I know of another club where a similar effort also fizzled. Good to read that it can be successful. Your club sounds like a lot of fun. I’d join. I learned so much from being a PC mom.
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Grad Pony Clubber here. A few things make a club or any organization/group successful and you hit upon them in your posts. The leadership, the individual members’ commitment and the level of volunteerism/help by either those members and/or their families.
Thinking of rallies…such preparation! The kid and now adult members cleaning up their tack and bathing horses and memorizing their dressage tests, walking their xc (twice!) and then doing show jumping and then the parade of teams and awards.
Meanwhile the various family and friend helpers are doing the million jobs behind the scenes…dads handling parking in the am and then on the grill cooking up hamburgers and hotdogs, mom’s sorting ribbons, making up packets, labelling dressage tests and putting them in order the days before (or probably the late nights leading up to the big day) to the club instructor or stable owner setting the show jumps and making up courses, to the younger kids running tests and serving as jump judges. Whew - it is a lot! To those adult members who don’t volunteer…hmmm…time to be voluntold I think. “Betsy, we’re having a rally on x date. All members will need to do some jobs to make this event a success. Which works best for you? Day of help? Set up jobs the week leading up or clean up after?”
There is another organization out there that is gaining traction and caters to all ages and you don’t have to have your own horse. It is the AEL - Athletic Equestrian League - https://www.athleticequestrian.com/. This organization is sort of a hybrid of IEA/IHSA with using host show school horses for competitions and also having a horse knowledge component. So you could take lessons at your home stable and then go to a show and draw a horse to use for the riding parts. I served at the National competition as a horse practicum judge. WOW - the adults were spot on and well prepared with their horse knowledge (and delivery in an oratory format). They were almost as good as the mini’s! (1st - 3rd graders! lol).
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If only this worked.
It does not.
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There’s always that one parent (likely more!). My pony club growing up was very hardscrabble. One fundraiser included shoveling composted manure into empty feed sacks and selling it in front of a grocery store. It was surprisingly lucrative but you can imagine how that went down at school.
Anyways, there was one parent who always always always excused herself and her kid from fund raising, and while she did make a cash contribution, it created a social distance that wasn’t great.
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I joined Pony Club as an adult about 2 or 3 years ago. I love it! The camaraderie, the support, the lessons, everything about it. It is a blast. Regarding membership, we’re turning people away as we’re at capacity.
Generally our lessons are at a top shelf facility owned by the parents of a member, sometimes we have them at other venues. Just had a xc lesson at another farm. Most everyone in our club is an eventer not too many show jumpers and no western folks. Lessons are paid for out of our dues and the funds we make at our annual fund raiser. There is no pay per lesson or monthly amount and mounted meetings run about 2 a month. So 24 lessons a year plus camp for 4 days in summer, is a pretty darn good deal.
Our main fund raiser is a derby held at a nearby farm. Everyone that can volunteers to help set up and gets assigned to one job or another on derby day. Last year I did scoring in the morning and then ran the start gate for the grasshopper division in the afternoon.
I participated in one rally - a show jump one. It was in November so rainy and cold the entire time. Luckily, we had an amazing member as our barn manager so our tack room was always neat and tidy and she kept everyone on schedule. I also helped out at a quiz rally our club hosted, I tested them on their leg wrapping skills and it was a pretty fun, if tiring day.
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