Event organizers - how is this division listing decided?

[Xanthoria]

I didn’t go to this event, but I am wondering why organizers choose to separate divisions in this way?

If you were giving out up to four sets of ribbons for a Sr novice division, for example, why separate them A through D, and don’t bother, dividing them by horse, amateur, rider and open?

Is it because of those 100 riders there were not an equal number of people qualified for horse, amateur, rider and open?

I could ask this show secretary, but they’re probably a bit busy right now, and it happens at a lot of shows around here and elsewhere that I’ve seen.

[enjoytheride]

I have not seen horse/rider division separations in a long time in my area. I do like separating the kids from the adults.

[Xanthoria]

But why is that? On Xentry it asks us which divisions we prefer to be in and it also gives amateur versus professional information, so I wonder why organizes choose to ignore all of that and lump in all the amateurs and pros and green horses together.

[CWNSF]

No help here- I’m interested in the answer though!

Side note; yay for that event for having so many entries that they could have that many division splits! As a BN rider in a small area, I’ve learned that competing against pros is just part of the deal. My husband can’t quite understand this and always gets very excited if/when he sees I’m ahead of a pro and I have to explain to him that I’m not amazing at riding, it’s just the pro is likely riding a green/problematic horse

[Janet]

@Xanthoria

If you were giving out up to four sets of ribbons for a Sr novice division, for example, why separate them A through D, and don’t bother, dividing them by horse, amateur, rider and open?

A- Because it is a lot of work to separate them by “horse”, “rider”,“amateur”, etc. when many of the entries are eligible for multiple sections.
B- Because, even after you spend hours trying to work it out, you are unlikely to end up with sections anything like the same size.
C- If one section has 3 entries and another section has 20 entries, you are going to have a lot of complaints/bad feelings from the riders in the section with 20 entries.

[Blugal]

Also, I imagine, you have riders with multiple horses in multiple divisions, so you start with those and make sure no time conflicts. Then back-fill the divisions with one-horse riders.

[Gardenhorse]

I think it just depends on the Secretary/Organizers. There are certain horse trials in this area that just do Junior and Open and others that regularly have Junior, Rider, Horse, and Open. It doesn’t seem to depend on number of entries, just how they like to do it. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Amateur division except at AECs). There are also some horse trials that will split divisions even if they don’t have to so you never have more than 8 or so riders in a division and others that never split unless required.

[Xanthoria]

Gotcha. It’s interesting to see that some events around here do split amateur, horse, rider, open, junior and senior and seem to make them pretty even. And others just A,B,C etc.

Perhaps the ones that split look at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd eligible choices made on Xentry and fill to make the divisions equal that way, but I’m not sure I care how many people are in a division, and more that I’m competing against people like me. So for me personally complaining about the size of a division if all entrants are eligible for the same division seems odd?

[Highflyer1]

Having been a secretary, I feel like there is no winning on this one! If it splits in such a way that there are 25 amateurs, 5 professionals and 5 juniors, many amateurs will not be thrilled that they are in the giant division and will complain. Sometimes even though on paper there are a lot of amateurs or juniors they want to ride in the open or horse divisions in order to have a better shot at qualifying for AECs. Some amateurs do not want to ride against juniors. Some juniors (or their parents) do not want to ride against adults. Some professionals have never competed above Novice. Some amateurs have competed at Advanced. Some riders paid $1 for an OTTB, Mustang, or rescue they started themselves and others are riding ex- Olympic or 5* horses.

Also accidentally putting someone in a division they’re not eligible for can get you in trouble with USEF and untold grief from competitors so some events are not willing to risk it.

[Groom_amp_Taxi]

I recognize this as the Rebecca Farm division listing, and from my recollection, they always do it this way. I think part of the reason may be that Rebecca is seen as a “destination” event, and the competitors are fortunate to have gotten in and know “they get what they get” in terms of divisions.

[FrittSkritt]

When I did entries/scoring, I worked with one who will list all divisions as “Open” but usually allocate entries as Rider/Open (just not explicitly stated as such), which allows for flexibility in adding in last-minute entries.

[grzywinskia]

Doing this allows events like the large one posted (Rebecca farm) to sub riders off the waitlist at the last minute and not have to be concerned about fitting them in to a division divided by pro / rider/ horse etc. pros and cons to both ways of doing it.

[HiJumpGrrl]

This looks suspiciously like Hagyard, which is split between 4 open divisions on purpose because of the Team Challenge aspect.