As we head into the winter,  WSHJA is beginning the search for new board members. This is the time, for all members, new or old, to get involved.

Both during the show season and off, your WSHJA board has been striving to improve your experience as a WSHJA member. To that effect they have taken your suggestions and comments and made changes to your local shows – including rule changes impacting points, tickets for prizes and class expectations – such as all 3’0” classes and above being held in the indoor ring at Monroe. All of these changes (and more!) have come about due to member input and, as we look back over the year, we have the opportunity to revisit the shows – pros and cons – and continue to work toward an even better experience for next year. 

Sponsorship has been a large area for discussion. The WSHJA has representatives that are in charge of caring for, and catering to, sponsors at horse shows, as well as trying to elicit more sponsorships from the community. However, we face a challenge when it comes to encouraging sponsorships from outside of our local barns. As an industry, each of us needs to take this charge up on our own. We must, in order to continue to improve shows and increase an interest in our sport, bring sponsors in from outside of our smaller circle. Our shows offer several different layers of sponsorship, so there is something for everyone, and the more people from outside our show world that we can get involved, the more attendance, revenue and excitement we can generate.  Also keep in mind that WSHJA is a not-for-profit organization, which means all sponsorship monies go directly into the shows.

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If you’ve been to an “A” circuit horse show lately, you may have noticed a new phenomenon; large audiences surrounding the hunter ring. Hunters, not known for their spectator draw, have found a new niche – the Hunter Derbies, and, with exciting option jumps, beautiful fields to ride in and a lot of money to win, not only are some of our best hunters showing up to ride, they are performing in front of ever increasing audiences. So what happened to the jumper ring in our area? The classes known for excitement and drama are being out shown by their quieter cousin. So how do we put the splash back into the jumper rings?

Morgan Carr, the WSHJA Jumper rep and Owner of Encanto Valley Farms, in Auburn, WA pointed to the largest necessity in our jumper rings – sponsors. If we want to encourage an audience to come watch, we need to have something to show off, and the most exciting thing to show off is fantastic horses and riders competing over tough courses. In order to get those horses and riders, we need an incentive, and that incentive is money. However, in order to be able to put up cash that is competitive with the larger venues close by, we can’t rely solely on our local barns for sponsorship; we need to reach out to the surrounding community and shop our sport out to more sponsors. More...