United States Eventing Association

Fast Facts: 2023 ECP Symposium

After a slam-dunk year in 2022 introducing the new format of the USEA Eventing Coaches Program (ECP) Symposium, former the ICP, the ECP Symposium is back this week for the 2023 edition of the educational experience designed to help instructors be the best influence they can be for their students. After much positive feedback on the new format in 2022, the 2023 Symposium will continue in a similar fashion, but with the addition of an extra day of education to the schedule. Learn everything you need to know about this year's ECP Symposium in this edition of the USEA's Fast Facts:

The Facts:

• The ECP Symposium is a gathering of riders, instructors, coaches and trainers for the purpose of exploring skills, techniques, learning styles and philosophies for the sport of eventing in North America.
• For the second year in a row, participants will be broken into interactive small groups of attendees and ECP Group Leaders. Each group will evaluate and discuss each individual horse and rider combination to form consensus on how best to progress that pair forward.
• Each day features a single discipline: Tuesday/dressage, Wednesday/show jumping, Thursday/cross-country.
• Each discipline will have demonstration riders representing the Beginner Novice, Novice, Training, Modified, Preliminary, and Intermediate levels who will warm-up in front of the groups, two levels at a time. While the demonstration riders are warming up, the small groups will discuss and create their lesson plans based on what they are seeing. Lesson plans are posted in written bullet point format on their flip charts and revealed at the end of the warm-up.
• Once all the lesson plans are revealed, two groups will be selected to present their lesson plan. The selected groups will send their Group Leader out to teach the lesson they have collectively designed.
• Group Leaders this year include several ECP Faculty and Level V/IV Coaches including Karen O’Connor, Phyllis Dawson, Robin Walker, Mary D’Arcy, Bec Braitling, Jan Byyny, Emily Beshear, and others.
• There will several demonstrations to get everyone’s ideas rolling:
  • an upper-level dressage lesson demonstration
  • a demonstration of creating various canters for jumping and galloping
  • a demonstration of best practices for starting young horses and green riders at the elements of cross-country, including ditches and banks
• Featured presentations from Peter Gray, Dr. Paul Haefner, Leslie Law and David O’Connor will keep everyone’s motivation high.

The Schedule

About the USEA Eventing Coaches Program

Instructors are essential to the training of riders and horses for safe and educated participation in the sport of eventing. The USEA Eventing Coaches Program (ECP) was initiated in 2002 to educate all levels of eventing instructors with essential training principles upon which those instructors can continue to build throughout their teaching careers. ECP offers educational workshops and assessments by which both regular instructors, Level I through Level V, Young Event Horse (YEH) instructors, and Young Event Horse professional horse trainers can become ECP certified. Additional information about ECP’s goals, benefits, workshops, and assessments as well as names and contact information for current ECP-certified instructors, YEH instructors, and YEH professional horse trainers are available is available on the USEA website. Click here to learn more about the Eventing Coaches Program.