United States Eventing Association

Adult Riders All Over the U.S. Forge New Friendships Thanks to USEA Adult Team Challenges

One of the exciting ways that members of the USEA Adult Rider program can come together throughout the year is by participating in a USEA Adult Team Challenge! Adult Team Challenges give adult riders from across the country a chance to compete in a friendly team competition. Read up on some of the Adult Team Challenges that have taken place across the country so far below.

Area I

The GMHA June H.T. (South Woodstock, Vermont) hosted 16 Adult Rider Teams for their Adult Team Challenge and the scores were tight at the end with just a few points separating the top three teams. Ultimately, it was team Rage Against the Runout, made up of Kate Homan, Jennifer Perkins, Suzanne Preville, and Andrew Beal, who prevailed with a cumulative score of 94.0.

Homan has been eventing in Area I since she was a young child. As she grew up, she represented the Area in the Young Rider program, and then seamlessly transitioned to the Adult Rider program in adulthood. She has high regard for the area’s Adult Rider Coordinator, Amy Winnen, and all that the program offers in her area.

“I think the Virtual Team Challenge was, from my personal experience, a big changing point, because it gave me a way to connect with a lot of other Area I members,” said the New London, New Hampshire-based professional rider. “I have been participating in that for about four years now, and in that time, I have really gotten to know a lot of the other adult riders, which has made the Adult Team Challenges a lot more fun!”

Area I’s Virtual Team Challenges are coordinated through a Facebook group for Area I Adult Rider Program members. Members are grouped up in teams and earn team points for various challenges throughout the season, such as competing at a show, volunteering, or other fun team activities that can be easily done online such as predicting which riders might be in the top-three at the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event.

“It really helps to put faces to names,” said Homan. “When you are at a lot of events, you see a lot of the same names, but if you don’t ever have a reason to connect with these people, they just sort of stay a name on paper. Over the years, I have been on four or five different groups made up of six or seven different people, and it really grows your friend base and makes you feel a lot more connected to the riders in your area.”

The Rage Against the Runout team was somewhat of a scramble team, made up of one other member of Homan’s Virtual Team Challenge team and two additional members of the Area I Adult Rider Program.

“We all had a great weekend,” she said. “This is the first time I have had luck with the Team Challenges, but regardless of how your team places, it’s so much more than the placings. It’s getting a group of people together and having fun and seeing their faces around the grounds and checking in on them and rooting for them. I am so thankful for every interaction I have had thanks to this program.”

Area II

So far in 2024, Area II has successfully hosted five Adult Team Challenges at the Southern Pines H.T. (Raeford, North Carolina), the CDCTA Spring H.T. (Berryville, Virginia), the Virginia Horse Center Eventing H.T. (Lexington, Virginia), the Seneca Valley Pony Club H.T. (Poolesville, Maryland), and the Horse Park of New Jersey H.T. I (Allentown, New Jersey).

Fifteen teams took part in the Adult Team Challenge at the Southern Pines H.T. at the Carolina Horse Park in March. Team Casino Royale, consisting of Ann Bower, Becky Holder, Allie Keresman, and Jeff Beshear, brought home the win with a cumulative score of 89.10.

This is Keresman’s first year participating in Adult Team Challenges. In addition to her contribution to the team win at Southern Pines, Keresman was also on the second-place Adult Team Challenge team, Amateur Hour, in USEA Area III at Stable View (Aiken, South Carolina) in June.

“It seemed like it would be a fun experience and like it would add a little bit more excitement to the weekend,” Keresman shared regarding her decision to give an Adult Team Challenge a try.

The Casino Royale team was a scramble team, but Amateur Hour was made up of Keresman and a group of three other friends who she met through her cross-country coach Holly Hudspeth. Keresman, who is a small animal veterinarian in Wilmington, North Carolina, has to travel three hours to ride with Hudspeth and loves using competitions as an opportunity to connect with the friends she has made through Hudspeth’s program.

“I am in Wilmington, one lady is in Aiken, and the other two are in Raleigh [North Carolina], so we all met up through training with Holly, and now we try to plan on going to the same shows together and meet up when we can,” she shared.

When the group had an opportunity to compete together as a team at Stable View, they didn’t hesitate. “We would all watch one another and cheer each other on. We would walk our courses and give tips to one another. We very much were trying to help each other out and just be a support system for each other through the weekend,” Keresman noted.

“Someone had said to us, ‘I don’t know why you guys put so much pressure on yourself to be part of a team,’ but we don’t see it as pressure," she said. "We see it as something fun to do! We weren’t going to be upset with each other if something were to happen. We were just happy to support each other and have a fun weekend. It was just icing on the cake that we ended up in second! We do this sport for fun. We have our normal day jobs, and this is our hobby, so this just added that extra fun aspect to our competition weekend.”

An added bonus the team found while walking their courses at Stable View was that the course decorator, Diane Bird, had named a combination on the Modified course after their team.

Gina Keller (Medina, Ohio) loves that she often gets to meet new people and fellow adult amateur riders through participating in Adult Team Challenges. Keller was first introduced to the adult team format at the 2023 USEA American Eventing Championships (AEC) presented by Nutrena Feeds (Lexington, Kentucky) when she participated in the USEA Adult Team Championships (ATC).

“It was a lot of fun!” she recalled. “Even if you aren’t able to meet up with your teammates in person at the event, you still get to connect online and root for them that way.”

That was the case for Keller at both last year’s ATC and for half of her team at the Adult Team Challenge at the Virginia Horse Center this past June.

“One of the people that was on my team was a barn mate, but the other two were barn mates from a different barn. Our two friend groups had never met before, but we had the chance to communicate on Facebook before the event," she said.

Keller’s friend, Emily Hummel, had not participated in the USEA Adult Rider program before this year. Keller was excited to have her join the fun.

“I have been bugging her for the past few years!” she joked. “I told her it would be so much fun so we could do things like these teams together. I have really appreciated the Adult Rider Program and that they place a lot of focus on the adult amateur rider. I think a lot of organizations don’t have that focus.”

Keller, who events at the Beginner Novice level with her 14-year-old Haflinger pony Snack Attack (A Fancy Star x Fiera), is aiming to participate in the ATC at the 2024 AEC in Lexington at the end of this summer.

Area III

In addition to the Adult Team Challenge hosted at Stable View, Area III also offered a combined Adult Team Challenge and Young Rider Team Challenge at the Bouckaert Equestrian H.T. and Area III Eventing Championships (Fairburn, Georgia) the last weekend of June.

Team TBD, made up of Ashley Greene, Emily Dender, and Rebecca Malcolm, rose to the top of the field with a team score of 91.74.

Area VI

Meanwhile, across the country in Area VI, the Twin Rivers Spring International in Paso Robles, California, hosted an Adult Team Challenge in April. At this event, teams were divided by level, and the lowest-scoring ATC team amongst the levels went to ATC Fast and Furious. Team members Bari Boersma, Nicole LaGrange, Pippa Murray, and Katie Casini all competed at the Novice level and ended the weekend with a team score of 85.60.

Boersma has been eventing for 40 years now and has been a member of the Area VI Adult Rider Program for around 20 years. Despite her longevity in the program, the Adult Team Challenge at Twin Rivers was only her second foray into adult team competition.

“My first time was back in the early 2000s,” she shared. “It was at the Training level, and we placed second.”

When Boersma had the opportunity to lease Julienne Biglin’s 12-year-old Oldenburg mare Reverie GWF (Rotspon x Chatari) for a short period of time earlier this year, she knew she wanted to enjoy her time with the horse while she had her.

“I saw they were offering the Adult Team Challenge and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve done that once before and it was so much fun!’ ”

So Boersma asked her barn mate Nicole LaGrange if she would join her on a team and they contacted the Adult Rider Coordinator to see if there were any other Novice level competitors looking for a team, and they lucked out! LaGrange connected with Murry and Casini on Facebook so that she and Boersma could get to know their new teammates better before the event.

Unfortunately, the weather was uncharacteristic at Twin with major downpours all weekend long. This put a strain on Boersma and LaGrange’s ability to connect with their two other team members in person, but that didn’t stop them from having that team spirit.

“I wish I could tell you that we all got together and made shirts and this and that, but under the circumstances we were not able to get together," she said. "That being said, we were cheering for each other from afar. I have been doing this for so very long, I started competing in eventing when I was 13, and I can kind of put my head down and focus on doing my job because that is how I have learned that I do best, but I sure do enjoy being part of a team. You really feel like you want to support the team as best as you can.”

LaGrange and Boersma were stabled next to one another, however, and got to help each other in person despite the rain throughout the weekend.

“We were constantly talking to one another and supporting each other because of the conditions!” she said. “They announced mid-morning that the cross-country course had been shortened because of the rain, but I immediately began thinking about how that would impact the optimum time. People often make fun of me because I am a big time person; I used to have a wheel, and I get a bit fanatical about my minute markers. If there is one thing you can control in eventing, it's your time faults, unless something else goes wrong.”

Together Boersma and LaGrange discussed the new optimum time and decided the best place for their new minute markers, and thankfully their new plan was spot-on. Both riders galloped across the finish flags double-clear after their rainy excursion across the country to ultimately finish first in the division (Boersma) and third (LaGrange) individually.

Area VII

The Inavale Farm H.T. (Philomath, Oregon) saw 15 Adult Team Challenge teams compete across four level-specific Challenges.

In the Starter Team Challenge, it was team ATC 1 that brought home the victory thanks to the efforts of team members Dorothy Echodu, Deborah Burgess, Aubrie Olsen, and Alexandra Konuzoukian.

Team members Serena Mills, Dorthe Wildenschild, Katherine Merkle, and Jennifer Hoxeng made up the team Pinnacle Ponies and earned the top prize in the Beginner Novice Team Challenge.

Emerging victorious in the Novice Team Challenge was Team 6’s and 7’s made up of Danielle McKinley, Jordan Hanson, Nicole Kuenzi, and Molly Johnson.

And last, but definitely not least, in the Training Team Challenge the team Horses with Human Names, made up of Lauren Hansen, Lauren Barker, Megan Packham, and Joshua Lacy, left Inavale Farm with the honor of being named the Training ATC Champions.

Area X

Adult Team Challenge competition made its way to Flagstaff, Arizona, for the Coconino Summer I Horse Trials during the last weekend of June. The competition offered two divisions of Adult Team Challenge competition, one at Starter and one at Beginner Novice. We hope to see the continued growth of the Adult Rider Program Adult Team Challenges in Area X in the future and thank Coconino for hosting the Challenge at their Summer I Horse Trials!

To learn more about the Adult Team Challenges taking place this year, check out this article.

To learn more about the Adult Team Championships taking place at the AEC, go here.

About the USEA Adult Rider Program

The USEA Adult Rider Program is open to all adults, professional or amateur, aged 22 years and older. The program aims to unite adults across all skill and experience levels in a supportive program that promotes education, communication, recognition, and fun! The goal of the Adult Rider program is to continue to encourage participation in the sport of eventing beyond one’s junior years by providing educational programs, support to Area Adult Rider programs, funding opportunities, and the Adult Team Championships (ATC) at the USEA American Eventing Championships, presented by Nutrena Feeds. Click here to learn more about the Adult Rider Program.