The Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association’s decision to stop offering classes for alumni had been coming for a while.
“They’d been thinking about this for years,” maintained Lena Andrews, a former member of the Lehigh University IHSA team who was active in the alumni competition formerly offered at IHSA shows.
Members of the executive team that makes the alumni organization run; Lena Andrews, chairman; Jessie Ann Green, treasurer; Andrea LaManque, secretary; Erica Green Wheeler, co-hunt seat chair; Jess Benner, co hunt-seat chair; Christa Bramberger, sponsorship chair;Katherine Bacolas, points chair; Meg Gennings, co-western chair; Tammy Cranouski, AEE national director; Jamie Windle, vice president. (Skylands Photography photo)
At those shows, riders draw their mounts by lot from English and Western school horses owned by the host colleges. During Lena’s conversations with IHSA officials, “It kept coming up that they want to focus on the undergrads, and that the alumni take horses away from the undergrads, in their opinion.”
Lena believes, “they didn’t really see the value of alumni,” noting there also was a geographic issue.
“Apparently, there are more alumni in the Northeast than in other parts of the country,” she explained.
The IHSA felt “alumni want to come show and go, so they didn’t believe alumni were giving back enough.”
Lena had other ideas about how the alumni could operate.
Finally, IHSA came to the organizers of the Alumni Tournament of Champions, a separate fixture that began in 2012, and informed them, “alumni is done” at the end of the 2022 season.
“We’re not going to have alumni at Nationals,” Lena and other alums were told.
As Lena noted, “You could have done something nice to end it. Instead, there was nothing, it ended in zones (competition). How horrible would it be if the first time you made it to Nationals, there was no Nationals?”
Lena and her fellow alums weren’t going to let that happen. They wound up putting on their own version of Nationals this year, with the idea that it needed “to look and feel as similar as possible” to IHSA Nationals, with prizes and the same kind of ribbons.
Tammy Cranouski, the IHSA’s national alumni director, joined in with the new effort, under the banner of Alumni Equestrian Events (find it on Facebook and Instagram), as it was applying to be a non-profit. She became one of five members on the reformulated board. Their first jobs included developing an alumni-specific rulebook with concepts geared to strengthen alumni riding going forward. Like IHSA, it is open to both men and women.
Jamie Windle and Lena Andrews with Tara Mathews.
The concept of regions was dropped by the AEE series; they are sticking with zones, for one less layer of administration. Although riders have to declare a home zone, unlike undergrads they can ride anywhere, with points counting for the home zone.
“You can make it a fun thing and travel and see the country if you want to,” observed Lena, noting participants may ride in 15 shows in a year, with the 10 best scores to count toward earning the 28 points needed to participate post-season.
Robert Cacchione, who founded IHSA with the late Jack Fritz, noted how the evolution of the IHSA affected the alumni classes.
“As the IHSA grew,” he explained, “we started to put alumni classes at the end of the show to save the horses for the undergrads,” who rode earlier in the day.
He mentioned riders were saying because of the length of the shows and the growth of the teams, the alumni classes didn’t work anymore.
“They’re trying to use the horses only so many times, as they should,” said Robert, who serves on the IHSA executive board and holds the title of Founder Emeritus.
Dropping the alumni competition was the result.
While he noted some of the regions, such as those in the Northeast — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New England, for instance, had sufficient horses to continue alumni competition, there weren’t enough throughout the country for that to happen everywhere.
“So the alumni came to an agreement with IHSA to do their own thing and save the horseflesh, properly, for undergrads,” Robert said.
Even so, “There is still a dialogue with the board of IHSA and the alumni,” he continued, explaining Tammy remains on the IHSA board.
“She has a lot of input; we always know what’s going on with the alumni and where we may be able to help out throughout the country in different ways.”
The alumni competitions, he mentioned, give former team members a chance to continue riding after graduation, “when they may not have wherewithal to own a horse at this moment in time. It still gives them an opportunity to ride and compete.”
He speculated, “This may enhance the alumni to grow even more. When they were under IHSA, they had to go by IHSA rules. They could only show at our horse shows, and it was tough for them to take off seven or eight times from work during the school year. Here, they can organize four shows on a weekend in different places in the country and people could show at all four shows. That makes it more flexible for alumni. We’re hoping this will help grow the whole alumni organization–I support them.”
Jamie Windle, the AEE vice president, went to Delaware Valley University and used to ride against Lena in the IHSA shows. Asked what she missed about the alumni not being part of the IHSA shows, Jamie observed that in the past, “We were at all the IHSA shows, so you were getting to know the kids from the time they came in as freshmen, to seniors to become friends with them and continue with them and show them how much fun we had.”
Those students are, after all, candidates for alumni classes after they graduate. At Nationals, graduating seniors can ride in the “Future Alumni Cup” in an effort to “entice them to come to this horse show to become alumni,” as Jamie put it.
The Tournament of Champions and Nationals will be held June 1 and 2, 2024 at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The same colleges that belong to IHSA can host an alumni show, just not at the same time as IHSA. It has to be either before or after an IHSA show, or on another date for insurance reasons, Lena commented.
With the new rules, Lena pointed out, “We hope it creates more shows, more interest, more alumni and more competitiveness in the post-season and even better nationals going forward,” said Lena.
“It provides a way for people who potentially could never make it to a finals this size. Someone riding once a week or every other week doesn’t have money to haul a horse to a show, get stabling, pay for a trainer.”
With this group, “You’re just paying your entries or maybe a hotel one or two nights. It’s an accessibility outside of college.
“You may be lessoning, but how are you horse showing? We think it provides another avenue for people to ride that’s not the A circuit. If you look at what’s thriving in the horse industry right now, the middle is going away, it’s either local shows or AA horse shows. You do schooling shows with your lesson barn or you want to go to Wellington.”
Membership is $45 for the year, with an option to pay a $20 one-time fee for those who don’t want to commit for the year. They can upgrade it to a full-time membership within 30 days.
Barns will pay a portion the same way IHSA does it now. For instance, if a barn hosting a show wants to charge $50 an entry, the alumni group will get $5 of that. A U.S. Equestrian Federation licensed judge isn’t required, just someone with judging experience; it could even be an IHSA coach.
The alumni shows are doing well, though they are so new there are no metrics on them yet. While AEE is on both Facebook and Instagram, it is baked into the Alumni Tournament of Champions website (https://www.alumnitoc.com/). That tournament, which drew from more than 20 states and Canada, took place at the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation in Gladstone, N.J., for three years.
Its origin was as “a once-a-year show for fun for anyone who ever showed as part of IHSA,” Lena said.
“You could be a current IHSA alum or not have shown since you left college and thought it would be fun to do a catch ride, show, get together, meet new friends, see old friends: Because we all rode on the team together 10 years ago, we’re going to come to New Jersey and do a show.”
Riders have to qualify for Nationals, but not the Alumni Tournament of Champions. It takes 40 to 45 hunt seat horses to run the show, with up to 24 riders/class. Some reunion classes go up to 40 riders. The weekend is split between western one day, hunt seat on the other day.
Organizers begin brainstorming in August for the Tournament.. A problem was how to get a sufficient number of western horses, “they have to come from far away. (The area around the USET Foundation is primarily devoted to English riding.)
Western is a big pa. rt of the alumni shows. Kimberly King Storey and Allison Erkman Rassinoux are happy winners. (Skylands Photography photo)
“We were absolutely scrambling,” Lena recalled.
She is into having riders win something by which to remember the competition.
“USHJA (U.S. Hunter Jumper Association) will happily clean out their closet for me,” she said.
“They sent us probably 40 silver mint julep cups left over from the Silver Stirrup Cup (a discontinued competition). I can repurpose them and make better prizes than some people have ever seen.”
Other backers in that regard have included Alliant Private Client, Perri’s Leather, Essex Classics and Success Equestrian. There were 61 supporters this year.
“When you win a class with us, you go home with something cool,” said Lena, noting that for western riders, that means the treasured belt buckles.
Unusually, when someone wins a perpetual trophy with the alumni group, they get to keep it for a year. (At most horse shows, the winner gets a photo taken with the trophy, then the show engraves it and hangs onto it until the next year.)
The alumni shows have taken off in a way that is encouraging for the concept.
“I can only hope it keeps growing,” said Jamie, “and that we are seeing even more new faces, not just retaining our old alumni faces.”
