Last night’s meeting of the Donegal Clubs was spent planning the North West Autumn League, reviewing the Regional Training Day and ironing out details of the second annual dinner dance!
The Autumn league will run in a similar format to previous leagues with classes from cross poles right up to 1.10m with training classes following each graded class and the possibility of a puissance competition for a novelty class at the final is being investigated. There will be prizes and rosettes for the league only and these will be presented at the Dinner Dance (more details below). The Autumn league (which is technically winter (!)) will take place in Templemore Equestrian Centre, Derry on Sundays 3rd, 17th and 24th November. Schedule to follow.
Next up for discussion was a review of the Regional Training Day which took place in Cloncaw Equestrian Centre on Sunday 28th July. Overall, the day was very successful with mainly positive comments received on the evaluation sheets returned. Suggested changes for next year’s training day were limiting riders to two lessons as many dropped out of their 3rd lesson and by only allowing riders to partake in two lessons, it would enable us to run lessons for up to an hour and a half which would address the issue of some finding the hour long lesson while in a group of 6 or 7 being too short.
The second annual Donegal Clubs Dinner Dance is taking place on Saturday 30th November at 8pm in the Station House Hotel, Letterkenny (formally Encore Ramada, opposite the old Dunnes Stores). Tickets will be priced at €30 as per last year and will be on sale at all three legs of the Autumn league. Music will be by DJ Keaton Ramsey again this year however a request was made by a member at the Donegal Clubs meeting last night that he was only allowed to play AC/DC once (Sorry Ryan and Anne but we don’t want to induce early labour!)
Prizes from the Autumn league will be presented at the dinner dance along with “The Horsey Oscars”. Each club will be asked to nominate some of its members in categories to be decided by those nominating (last year’s winner from our club was the fabulous Carmel ferry for her sterling effort put in to organising the fashion show) so get your thinking caps on! Keep note of any humorous or notable activities of club members and have them ready when nomination time comes round!
This year, following the announcement of each clubs winner, an overall winner will be chosen via voting cards distributed to each table.
A slide show of photographs from the year will also be shown during dinner so if you have any you would like shown, keep them to hand for when the call for photos goes out!
Finally, if anyone wants to up or downgrade before the Autumn league starts, let Patricia know. Also, if you know of anyone interested in joining the riding club, membership has been reduced for the remainder of this year – contact Patricia for more details.
