| Click
here for pictures from the 2007
Regional vaulting competition. The Better Late Than
Never Vaulters is the new team that Beth and I started this
year. I wanted to break off from the club we were with
last year and be more competitive, but my schedule doesn't
necessarily guarantee that I can continuously vault with any one
other club so the obvious answer was to create my own.
As the name implies, if we take on more vaulters in the
future, they will be others who learned of and/or started the
sport later in life. Currently we are not an active team
and don't have official practices.
The following pictures are of my own horses that I sometimes
vault on.
Toby, my new vaulting horse (or so I hope):
Sampson after the Vaulters of the Northwest competition where
I took him in the green horse class:
Old vaulting news On September
3rd (2005) Beth and I tried
vaulting for the first time. I thought that it looked
simple enough, but I found that it is much more difficult than
it looks. Even though I see that I have a lot to learn, I
had a great time and plan to continue doing it. Now I just
have to wait and see how sore I am tomorrow.... I ended up
quite sore from my first time vaulting, but went again on
September 18th. It is too bad that we didn't have a camera
because I'm sure that some people would have found it amusing.
Not only did I stand on the back of a horse that was walking, I
jumped off. Unfortunately, after landing on my feet, I
apparently decided to sit down in the arena. Oh well,
there is always next time. With any luck I will soon
figure out how to land on my feet after jumping down from a
moving object that is taller than me.
Although I'm sure that many people had no doubt about this, I
think it has been determined that I am officially crazy.
Beth and I are going to compete at a vaulting competition on
December 3rd. Beth is sticking to compulsories on both the
barrel and horse and the barrel double that I convinced her that
she needed to do with me. I, on the other hand am doing
those three classes plus freestyle on the horse and freestyle on
the barrel.
Yesterday (December 3rd) Beth and I went to the vaulting
competition. It was a lot of fun, but it sure was cold.
The biggest surprise was that in our 1st year barrel
compulsories class Beth and I got 3rd and 1st out of 10 vaulters.
There were a few people taking pictures of us so I will try to
get those pictures and put them up for all to see. For the
double that Beth and I did, Beth had been having a terrible time
with the mount. Somehow at the competition she managed to
channel those issues over to me and I missed the mount.
A few pictures from the competition can be found
here. On December 31st we started working at the trot. I
(through some sort of really poor planning) wore silk longjohns
under my pants. At the walk this wouldn't have been much
of an issue, but at the trot I just seemed to keep sliding
within my pants.
Last week (April 1st) I took Sampson to vaulting practice and
we used him. The day before that my new surcingle had
arrived so we used that also. Other than when I was
vaulting I walked next to Sampson's head to make sure that he
didn't do anything crazy, but it seems the only thing he really
wanted to do was make the circle smaller. Initially he
would try to watch each of the vaulters approach and he would
try to stop when they got close. After a round or so he
finally just kept walking. He didn't seem to be phased by
much of what was done on him. Neal stood on him and jumped
off and he barely looked. Lauren ended up with her ankles
crossed up by his ears and he hardly even seemed to notice.
Sampson went to vaulting again this weekend (April 15th).
This time he didn't get used as much because the horse we are
competing on was also there, but Sampson did good. He
didn't try to come in at the walk and after some work he would
allow approaches at the trot without trying to stop. At
the trot he was doing better and wasn't constantly trying to
zoom. He did try to trot some when he should have been
walking, but otherwise he did very well. April 29th and 30th
was the Vaulters of the Northwest competition. I competed
in Novice walk compulsories and freestyle and Preliminary
technical test. I also tested for and received my Novice
pin. Sampson went up for the green horse class and
considering how little work I have done with him he did pretty
well. On May 4th I got to practice for the first time with
Iron Mountain vaulters. I didn't manage to mount at the
canter, but I am hopeful that I will manage to in the next few
weeks. July 26th through July 30th was the National Vaulting
Competition. Months ago I foolishly decided that I was
going to compete at Nationals even though I am still relatively
new to vaulting. What this meant was that I not only had
to start competing at the trot (no walk at Nationals) I have to
be able to mount on my own (no assisted mounts). I worked
with both Iron Mountain and Flying Star in addition to Son Rise
and managed to get my trot mount...... most of the time.
Thursday didn't start out too well for me and in practice I
missed 3 mounts. However, I did managed to get my mount
when I was in the competition ring for Compulsories. |