What is unfortunate is that you seem to be misconstruing an $80 fee and a few hours as something that is detrimental to your business. I also have spent some time at the top of this sport, and I do honestly care about it. But your arguments ring hollow.
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Please accept my apologies because I am not looking for an argument with you either - I simply answered your question because I felt bad that you seemed upset that your question, which was a bit of an offshoot from the original topic, was ignored. Had I known that you were looking for an answer that did not require a rule change, I would not have replied. Lesson learned, have a good night!
What is unfortunate is that you don’t seem to be capable of understanding that this $80 fee and a few hours does not exist in a vacuum for most families.
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Because you see it as an argument, when I’m literally just reporting the general viewpoint of the customer that exists below the top of the sport. You think they should stick to the local shows. They do too. No one is arguing. People should be arguing over how to make rated shows more accessible to the next tier. This is most definitely not that argument.
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You can’t be serious. You honestly believe that $80 and a few hours annnually are a detriment to our sport? A sport that costs hundreds, if not thousands to even just ride (not show) monthly? Get real. And you think that the benefits to our youth are outweighed by said temporal and financial commitment? Wow.
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You don’t seem to understand what it means when I say that you don’t seem to understand that this $80 fee and a few hours does not exist in a vacuum for most families. I already explained it, but you don’t seem to have been able to make the correlation, so I will try to explain once more:
For many families, what you consider to be a one time $80 fee plus a few hours of training is much more than that; it is yet another increase in the cost of one of their children’s hobbies that happens year after year, on top of the regular yearly increases in the costs of the other children’s hobbies, and now on top of the increase in fees, the parent has to complete an online training in between a full-time job, getting ALL the kids to all of their various sports and activities, planning, shopping for, and preparing meals, paying bills, making sure there is enough money to put aside every month for college and retirement…
If this isn’t you, and all it is really is just an easy one time increase of $80 and a few hours of missing out on your favorite tv show to complete the training, well congratulations you are incredibly lucky.
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Calm down. You don’t seem to understand that I am currently not showing because I can’t afford it, so, I do understand financial limitations. I think you need to take a step back and consider why you think $80 and 4 hours are so threatening to our sport.
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Which part of my posts specifically makes you think I need to calm down? The part where I calmly explained to you for the second time why some families might balk at extra fees and time requirements because you didn’t understand the first time when I calmly explained it?
Why on earth you are scolding me for not understanding your reasons for not showing when this is the first time you have brought it up is just so odd I don’t know what to say to you.
I have tried twice now to explain why the $80 plus time for training might be an issue for a lot of families; if you still believe that it is not an issue for anyone, then you do you.
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You seem generally high strung. You seem also to not understand that even low level participation in this sport is stupidly expensive and so if an $80 annual fee is prohibitive, that may be problematic. End of conversation.
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If by high strung you mean that I am baffled by the fact that you seem completely incapable of reading my uncomplicated posts for comprehension, then I agree with you.
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Just to point out an argument that seems to be lost in the shuffle… would $80 and 90 minutes of someone’s time be “too much” if it saved a child from being taken advantage of? If it meant that the person who observed bad behavior knew what to do about it and felt obligated to do the right thing instead of turning a a blind eye?
You don’t have to agree that it’s effective but the purpose of the SS training isn’t just to waste people’s time. It’s to educate people with access to children and/or an ability to protect those children so they know what to do. Efficacy is another point and I anticipate (and to some extent agree with) the idea that this online training once a year may not be that effective… but the point to training everyone in our organization about the terrible things we know are happening every day in this organization is to try to prevent it. And making sure people know that we all have a responsibility to try to stop. That’s the purpose of the SS training.
Pretend the training was on gun safety or fire safety or CPR and that it was for parents with some ancillary connection to schools not horse shows. Would we be divorcing from the discussion the fact that even if training is time consuming and membership costs money, that is balanced against having more people in the right place who can protect kids?
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Thank you! This is exactly the point - it’s about the safety and well-being of youth in our sport. The argument that the membership and SS training are cost prohibitive and time consuming for a parent and thus a deterrent ring hollow when there are plenty of other analogues in other youth activities, and when you compare the time and expense involved with the cost of going to a single day of a single rated show. I also agree that if we were talking about other safety measures, there wouldn’t be this handwringing. Preventing child abuse seems to really get people riled up, and not in a good way. SS isn’t perfect, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be on a large scale - but it’s sure better than the nothing that was being done prior.
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To @CBoylen’s point about how this isn’t happening in a vacuum, I’m chiming in as someone who would have been affected by this change had it been made while I was a junior. Scenario: my barn is traveling to Vermont for two weeks, but I have one point left to qualify for state medal finals and I want to go to the show up the road and catch that last point. My mom and I load my horse up and she signs as trainer. I catch my last point and that’s the last time she signs.
Now, my mom was single-parenting two kids. So with this rule change, she has to find the time to sit down and take the SafeSport training. My mom was a phys ed teacher and a D1 champion athlete in college- she sees the value of the program and the training, that part is not the problem. But now it’s become one more thing she has to do. As for the join fee, that’s on me. I have to figure out when I’m going to braid another two horses to cover that expense. Since I spent my last two junior years mostly braiding from 9PM to 6AM and then getting myself and my horse together for the 8AM Maclay because why can’t I ever show in the afternoon, show organizers? that’s another 90 minutes out of my nap time the night before, which is going to impact my ability to give my horse a good ride.
So, is it a deal breaker? No. And I certainly see the value in making sure that people who are acknowledging the responsibility for junior exhibitors are able to be held to the standard of that responsibility. But I do think it is an additional challenge. If I were a junior rider today, that same state medal can now be offered at the state association’s unrated “regional” horse shows- and those two additional little burdens would absolutely push me towards going to those horse shows instead. So today, I’d be lucky because I would have that lower cost opportunity, albeit at the cost of developing myself in more rigorous competition happening at the rated shows. But as a kid, I wouldn’t have had that backup plan- we didn’t have that regional option, if I wanted those points because the state medal final was my achievable goal vs the financial costs of qualifying for the Maclay and shipping to regionals and so on were out of reach, it was rated or nothing. And those are the kids I feel for with this rule change.
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If you are someone who is keeping your horses at home, not in a program somewhere, shows aren’t really that expensive.
I just attended a show at a prestigious venue. My total bill was $225. I do jumpers, so no braiding, no stall.
The cost of my membership fees was $165 this year. Now, if I was a junior, my mom would have to pay an extra $80 for nothing. She doesn’t compete. So now the cost of the fees to USEF and USHJA are more than the show I went to.
And unrated shows, at least around here, are still very cheap. I can usually show two horses for around $100.
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Ok but we could just require the parents of minors to take safesport training and not charge them anything. Which, really, this should already be a requirement.
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The only reason they need to become members is if they’re signing the blanks as trainers, which they’re likely doing because actual trainer does not board the animal & does not want to be strung up because Mom forgot to wean Dobbin off of Testable Supplement X the week before they show.
USEF cannot suspend someone that is not a member (and traditionally, I believe, we try to punish the humans not the horses with suspensions). So, I just really don’t see any way around a requirement that the person signing as the responsible party also be a member. This seems quite necessary. And, did this not also arise because grooms were suddenly being listed as trainers after the GABA (or whichever cocktail du jour) crackdown?
And then I laugh because I wasted yesterday morning specifically trying to discuss possible ways to add value to what the hunter ring offers in the face of rising costs to absolutely no avail, yet here we are with $80 and SS training being the straw that takes down the sport.
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Remember, the definition of “trainer” is the person who handles all day-to-day care and management of a horse. It is not a professional. Those are “coaches.” So a parent who signs as “trainer” for a home kept horse is the correct definition. Your examples are not applicable in this this case.
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What I keep coming back to is that this is yet another way that the grassroots folks are being trampled on by the big-bucks folks who are high profile cheaters or horse abusers.
A college kid can’t teach up-down lessons for pay, or even for course credit, because that would make them a professional, because a bunch of people decided that it was a great idea to get paid as bookkeepers when they were actually getting paid for riding horses.
The person signing with care/custody/control of the horse has to be a member so that if the trainer drugs the horse USEF can penalize the groom. And so that if the person who signs on the line as trainer abuses a child they can be held responsible by the association.
The show pass thing is some nonsense. That’s the change that’s actually going to inhibit Local Show Lauren from going up to Vermont with her barn for two weeks for the experience of the thing. That’s the one I’m mad at USEF about. The “trainer has to be a member” thing, well, in the context of why they say they passed the rule, I can’t really get after them for that one.
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Unfortunately that doesn’t seem feasible where I live. I get $349 in fees before you enter a class. That assumes one is a member of USEF and USHJA, so no show pass, and that you’re doing non-nominated jumper classes.
Also noting that those show passes aren’t cheap which roughly halves the difference in cost between showing as a member vs a non-member if you do one show.
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USEF can and has suspended/banned non-members in the past. I just really don’t think that this was a necessary expense to tack on. It targets the people in the horse world who are most likely to be on a tight budget to begin with.
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