Prior to the Youth Equestrian Development Association’s (YEDA) national championship in Tennessee, the young riders of the Concord Equestrian Team, based in Delaware, Ohio, put together a vision board of their goals for the season: “Better my posture.” “Making sure I don’t forget my pattern.”
When nationals came around in June, coach and JD Show Horses founder and owner Jessica Daniels’ team of middle and high school equestrians went on to win several national championship titles for their divisions. Daniels said for them, it was all about personal growth.
“It wasn’t about winning; it was about improvement,” Daniels said. “I think the biggest thing as a coach was to try to get these kids to understand — the winning is the icing on the cake, but the actual individual improvement is what we strive for.”
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It was something Daniels wanted to highlight given the association’s catch-riding competition format. On the day of the competition, riders randomly draw a horse according to their skill level and division, then without warmups, hop on the horse and trot into the arena for different events such as rail and pattern riding.