(Point) Tally Ho!

“No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.”  ~Winston Churchill

Oh, blog.  Where to begin?

Since returning to school from winter vacation, I’ve continued my dressage lessons and improved my dressage riding skills.  The third weekend in February, I accompanied my dressage teammates to Lake Erie College, where we had our final regional dressage show of the season.  Overall, it went all right; we didn’t place that high, but we sure had a blast!  (I’m pretty sure if there was a competition for having the most fun, Albion College would have been champion. We were laughing and joking around, but were serious when it was necessary.)

The whole team had so much fun at the Lake Erie meet!

After all the showing was done, we had to tally up region points.  Guess who was doing that for Albion?  That’s right, me!

I’d totaled all the points from the entire season for all the competing riders and schools.  So when Danielle, our coach, was approached by another coach about having to break a tie breaker, I was quite confused because I didn’t have tie on my point sheet.  After I mentioned this to Danielle, she had me go ask the coach who’d claimed there was a tie and the girl tallying points from her team.  I told them I didn’t have a tie on my sheet and we sat down and went through the entire point sheet, found the error, and learned there was, in fact, no tie.  (Thank you, Albion College accounting classes!)

 While we were there, once we’d finished going through the team points, we double-checked to make sure we had the same points for all individual riders.  We also made a list of the top eight riders for each division.  After everything was double-checked (it felt like triple-checked by that time!), our regional representative went to the front of the room to announce the placings.

L-R - Sam Green, Johnna Serydynski, and me at Lake Erie. Go B Team!

I was done with my part, right?  Right?  Um…

I was talking with my teammates when Danielle tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go to the front to announce the placings.  I looked at her – confused – and then looked at the regional rep, who informed me her computer had died.  It turned out I was the only one with the results!  Not fully prepared, I took my computer to the front of the room and started to announce team placings – until my low battery warning came on!  I quickly darted across the room to get my charger so we didn’t have two dead computers.  In the end, Albion finished fourth in the region. Good job team!

Individual placings started with Introductory Level; Nora Cox came eighth and Sam Green came fourth for us. At Lower Training, Alyssa Olson came fifth and in Upper Training, Greer Clemons was eighth.  Finally, at First Level, Nicole Howey came seventh and my fellow blogger Kjirsten Sneed finished first.  That’s right – top ten finishes all around and our captain was named First Level Champion Rider, which means she will be attending Nationals in April.

In a nutshell, that was our Lake Erie show and, even though it wasn’t our best, I enjoyed every second of it.  I think it was a great way for us to end the season and I’m sure next season will be just as good – if not better.

Wildchild - AKA "Snow-Covered Fluff Ball"

Since then, I’ve continued my two dressage lessons a week and have improved quite a bit.  I had three great lessons before leaving for Spring Break and am hoping for them to stay that way for the rest of the semester. Most of the dressage stuff is finally starting to really click for me – it’s quite exciting!

Meanwhile, I just got back from a super-fun spring break – the highlight of which was the entire day I spent at the barn.  I was there from 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night, rode seven different horses, went out to lunch with my trainer, and then stuck around to watch some lessons.  It was fantastic.  On top of that, I got to see my horse (Wildchild) multiple times over break and I’ve most certainly missed her a lot.  Driving to the barn to visit her was the first thing I did when I got home and my snow-covered fluff ball made me grin from ear to ear.

I apologize for a long lag between blogs, but you can see things have been busy.  My life has been filled with school, working as a resident assistant, keeping that (now famous) point tally for the IDA, and my favorite thing in the world – horses!