2015 AGM Presidents Report

2015 to 2016 has been a busy 12 months for us. We have held our usual competitions, training days, have advanced plans to resurrect hack training days and a record four judges’ seminars were held by the club. It is fantastic to see the club constantly growing and being increasingly proactive.

Each year clubs are encouraged by DNSW to hold clinics to encourage new judges and help current judges go up a level. Our regional DNSW delegate, Helen Zimic, is always being praised for the number of clinics/seminars that this club hosts and it is noted within DNSW that this is outstanding. We held two in September last year run by Sue Cunningham and Nell Marshman for levels E and F judges and one for C and D level judges. Another clinic was held by Nell Marshman in February this year for H level judges and of course we have just held a Para Equestrian judges clinic where three judges became accredited PE judges.

This all came about as the club embraced incorporating Para Equestrian tests into our mainstream training and competition days as encouraged by DNSW. We soon realised that we had a major problem of a lack of accredited PE judges in the area and a general lack of expertise ourselves as competition co-ordinators in this area. The only way to fix that was to get ourselves someone who knew what they were talking about on-board the committee and advise us of the ins and outs. This is how Janett Watts ended up as our Para Equestrian Liaison Officer. Our first official competition with PE tests offered received entries from five riders, the most any club in NSW has ever had. Janett was also instrumental in organising the PE judges’ clinic.

The club held four training days in the past 12 months in November, January, July and September. This is when we saw Toni Ellem enter the committee. Valerie had time out for a few months and Toni took over the running of the training days. Toni was so successful at it that Valerie let her keep them! Toni was also instrumental in getting Protocol Days off the ground in February. Due to a slight glitch as to whether they were covered by insurance, they were put on hold for a while, but this has now been positively resolved. A big thank you to Terry Roy and his little helpers for running the bbq at our training days

We have held four official competitions, one of which being our annual championships. These were held in November, April, June and August. All competitions were very well attended. All our competitions are now on Nominate and I would estimate that 95% of the entries come via Nominate. Toni has finally learnt to navigate her way around the computer scoring suite which has resulted in us using now at competitions. Coralie and I had dabbled in it before but put it in the too hard basket. I would like to thank all our volunteers on both our training and official competition days. With so many riders and non-riders putting up their hands to help out, it has made my job so much easier and I am forever grateful.

The club unfortunately saw its President, Coralie Burnett resign in June due to family and work commitments. This saw me, Valerie Brodin step up from Vice President to President in the interim. Coralie has been instrumental in our capital works purchases over the years, a major sponsor at our Championships and basically a one stop shop for whatever you needed to know. What she didn’t know, she found out. Hopefully she will continue to support us whenever she can.

The club is well underway in the planning stages of resurrecting the hacking part of the club. Penny Coleman has approached the committee and with our blessing has our first hacking training day coming up in December.

We also were reminded last month of the ruling 8.2 from DNSW that came into effect from the 1st January 2015. It stated that horses to qualify at a level could only submit one test with one judge. This was going to have a huge impact on a club like ours with extra judges at official competitions, the time associated to procuring extra judges and scoring alike and the costs. Luckily ruling 8.2 has now been rescinded.

I would like to thank Stef Winwood who created and manages our new look webpage. And to Linda Pike who got us up and running on Facebook.

This year the club purchased medium sized cones for our portable arena, a new fridge for our office and a portable mounting ramp. The club also paid for a specially made mounting ramp for our riders with disabilities. Again, thanks to Janett for getting the project off the ground and to Show Society committee member Allan Richards for getting the ramp built and mentioned in the paper. On another note, our canvas cover for our trailer was stolen this month sometime from the showground. The showground President, Milton has agreed to let us keep the trailer in the green shed from now on.

I would like to thank all elected committee members, club members and volunteers who have helped out over the past 12 months. Without your help nothing that we do would be possible.

Valerie Brodin, President MVDHC