T Minus One Month and Counting!

We're about one month out from our big adventure! We received our official itinerary from New Zealand Pony Club today and it looks like we will have an action packed 2 weeks of sight-seeing and riding. (More on that in a later post!)

I am Janna Bankston Ritacco, the coach for the USPC Inter Pacific Exchange Team. I am excited to meet up with the team when we all convene at the Wylie's Sandia Creek Ranch near San Diego. We start our training session & team building at their USPC Riding Center on April 27. This will give me a chance as the coach to assess each rider's personal riding style and get a feel for what type of horse each of the team members will do best with when we are in New Zealand. (For instance, who can deal with a naughty pony, who can inspire a slow moving warmblood, who has a calming effect on a hot TB, and so on and so forth!) We will have two days or riding and fun social type activities to build team cohesiveness before we depart for New Zealand late on the night of April 29th.

I have already had the privilege of meeting some of the team. Robyn Whitten, our "chef d'equipe," is a good friend of mine. I have taught her daughter, Sarah, for several years, and their baby horse Wiley is boarded at my barn. At the USPC Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN in February I was able to meet Kiersti Wylie & Kaleigh Quinn. They were both National Youth Congress delegates. At a clinic in New Jersey a few weeks ago I was able to work with Kelsey Hamilton and Kaleigh Quinn and get a sense of their riding style. I cannot wait to meet Alexa Wolf & Susan Thomas, although I feel like I already know them thanks to this blog, Facebook, and the DVD's that they each had to submit as part of the application process for the team.

I was happy to be able to view each of the girls' DVD's and feel like it has already helped me feel each one out as a rider. I was impressed by their level of riding... all I can say is "Watch Out" to Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand & Australia... the US team is rock solid and is ready to bring home the Nation's Cup!

If you're still reading at this point I'll tell you a little bit about me... I am a graduate H-A Pony Clubber from the Carolina region. I am a National Examiner for USPC which means that I get to travel around the US and conduct Pony Club testings. I am an eventer (competed through preliminary level) and have recently started foxhunting. I have a young elephant sized drafty-cross gelding that is perfect for hunting and we've enjoyed learning the ropes together. (Hopefully he agrees!)

About two weeks before we leave for California I will be moving my boarding/teaching/training operation to a 66 acre equestrian center near Furman University. I hope I can get all the critters settled before leaving for the other side of the world! I have the creme de la creme of barn help and I'm confident that they'll keep things running smoothly while I galavant around New Zealand.

My husband, Daryl, is still upset about me leaving him for a month last summer when I coached last year's Inter Pacific Exchange team in Hong Kong & China. He was not thrilled to hear that I had applied to go to New Zealand. He will be stuck at home taking care of our "wonder-dog" Charlotte, a stereotypical black & white high octane Border Collie. Last year I had to pay my barn help to come pick her up and take her with them to do the barn so that she could "work" while I was gone. (She is very serious about her work which includes, but is certainly not limited to: supervising the gelding's pasture, supervising the mare's pasture, supervising each pasture again, herding the wayward chicken, "helping" longe horses, and herding anything that might need herding.)

Until next time...

Janna Bankston Ritacco