This past weekend I went to the Midsouth Eventing and Dressage Association (MSEDA) Official’s training at Flying Cross Farm in Goshen KY. My trainer talked me into it so that I could become a stadium judge. The process includes attending a training, shadowing two judges for a minimum of 8 hours and taking a test. I did quite a bit of jumper judging in my hunter days as barter for my entry fees so I figured it could be fun.
The morning started with a power point presentation by Wayne Quarles. He did a really good job explaining the roles of officials (judge, TD, PGJ, CD) and then we moved into reviewing rules. Luckily things are pretty similar to normal jumpers so much of it was review. Next we watched several videos that demonstrated things like when to call a refusal versus a jumping effort when a horse crashes a jump and what is considered crossing your path.
After lunch we went out and walked a Novice stadium course so Wayne could have us point out what was legal/not legal (such as a one stride vs a two stride) and what was legal but not appropriate for the level (such as a swedish). I learned a ton and I can’t wait to shadow this summer and take my test.
The hope is to work off a bit of my entry fees for my balls to the wall schedule this summer 🙂
Fall Line Farm 
I kinda love opportunities like that to learn more about the rules and the whats and the whys behind our sport. While we have a lot of volunteer opportunities around here, I haven’t heard of any that have training sessions like this. Very cool!
LikeLike
I volunteer a lot too-I find scribing really helpful when it comes to learning.
LikeLike
This is intriguing! Totally something I would do. Any idea what kind of compensation officials get?
LikeLike
I’m not sure really-in the H/J world I would barter. I would guess (and this could be totally wrong) a couple hundred a day? I used to get $100/half day for H/J shows if I didn’t trade entries.
Wayne also spent the afternoon doing XC official training which was really cool-I learned a TON about how to design courses and jumps to be safer for the horse and how small changes can affect the safety of XC jumps because of how they change how the horse sees it.
LikeLike