Road to NAJYRC: Teresa Harcourt

Teresa has been blogging about her journey to NAJYRC Championships as a member of the Area VI eventing team. Watch out, rest of the country: It sounds like Area VI is working its bum off!

From Teresa:

OK, Horse Nation.

It is officially FOUR WEEKS until Area VI Young Riders, equine companions, coaches, team vet, and parents depart for Lexington! The horses as well as their riders have now been put into bubble wrap!

This week has held a lot of excitement for Team Area VI. This last Tuesday and Wednesday was Candidate’s Camp at Flying Tail Farm in Gilroy, CA. Myself and Sarah Braun are already based at Flying Tail which is pretty convenient. Erin Murphy and Gigi Herron (both 1* Riders) traveled to the farm for these important two days.

On Tuesday, each young rider was able to ride on the flat with Dayna and then were filmed doing their dressage test that will be ridden at NAJYRC. We all were able to watch one another’s rides both in person and on video, which was extremely helpful. In the afternoon, Dayna put our show-jumping to the test by giving us a few warm-up fences and then sent us on our way to do a course. This was an excellent simulation of our warm-up situation soon to come at NAJRYC. After the long day at Flying Tail, we all headed back to Shannon’s house to watch our rides on the TV and chat about all the details of NAJYRC. It was great to be around all the people who are working so closely with the Young Riders. It was great to have Dayna and Shannon answer all of our questions along with parent questions, too.

Wednesday started early in order to go over all the team equipment for NAJYRC. I never knew there could be so much stuff! (Well, that’s a lie. My horse has enough stuff to supply a small army.) But really, there is a ton of stuff for Area VI. I am sure people will know where we are stabled due to our stockpile. We were assigned a team trunk, saddle pads and blankets. That very moment when we all received our Area VI Event Team Equipment was when I realized what I will be a part of in FOUR WEEKS. I believe that I can say for the entire Area VI Team that the experience we are about to have is once in a lifetime. Young Riders is an incredible program that fosters such an amazing stepping-stone and overall experience for any rider’s career.

Our next event is Area VI Young Rider Camp, June 28-30,which will be held at Twin Rivers Ranch in Paso Robles, CA. Camp will be an excellent opportunity for all the Young Riders (not just team members) to interact, get to know each other, get to know the program more and just have a good time. It is hard for me to believe how fast time is flying but I cannot express enough how exciting this really is. I almost prefer it be July 14^th already! The next time I update y’all will be during camp! I am sure that post will be quite long!

Till Next Time!
Teresa and Area VI!