United States Eventing Association

The USEA Youth Mentorship Program gives a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to run and officiate an international event, helps Young Riders and Intercollegiate athletes experience competition from the inside as a part of the officiating and management teams, encourages furthering sport education, and helps youth athletes seek and identify career paths and job opportunities, network, communicate, and seek new experiences within the eventing.

This year, eight young riders participated in the program at the Maryland International in July and at the USEA American Eventing Championships presented by Nutrena Feeds at Galway Downs in August.

Each participant wrote about their experience in the program, and we are sharing them here. To learn more about the USEA Youth Mentorship Program, click here.

The Mentorship Program was definitely the best opportunity I have gotten in the young rider program so far. The program was well organized and definitely has helped expand my knowledge and experience in eventing.

To me, the best part was getting to really talk to absolutely everyone who helps put an event together. Learning from different officials who have been doing this longer than I've been riding definitely gave me a new perspective and taught me a lot.

I really enjoyed spending time with the Technical Delegate, Sharron Sarchet. She taught me a lot and was an amazing person to learn from. It gave me a great understanding of things from a TD's point of view. I am always the rider who is frustrated or has issues that need worked out with the TD, but getting to be on the other side of it gave me a new perspective.

Overall, I am incredibly grateful for this experience and would do it again in a heartbeat. It was an amazing look into how events run and how each part comes together with the help of all the amazing people behind the scenes. This sport is incredibly difficult, and it's awesome when we all work together to lift each other up and keep events running!