Ensuring U.S. Hunter Jumper Association championships and feature classes don’t compete with each other for entries, the expansion of national classes at the upcoming Las Vegas National Horse Show under its new management and changes in store to the annual USHJA meeting were among the topics discussed Monday at the final virtual USHJA Town Hall of 2024.

USHJA President Britt McCormick said next year’s town halls will be quarterly beginning in January.

Here are some of the top takeaways from the town hall:

• USHJA is working on a master calendar for its championships and classes.

While the U.S. Equestrian Federation is ultimately in charge of the competition calendar, USHJA can make recommendations, so the organization is currently working on a master calendar of USHJA’s properties and championships to avoid overlap among them.

The calendar will be broken into three tiers, with the top tier comprised of national championships such as the USHJA International Hunter Derby Championship and the newly created USHJA Amateur Hunter Championships. The dates of those championships will be blacked out so lower-tier properties cannot take place at the same time. The second tier will be comprised of regional championships, which potentially could take place on the same dates in different parts of the country. For example, the West regional derby championships could take place at the same time as the South region Zone Jumper Team Championships. The third tier would be comprised of programs and classes that take place at weekly horse shows, like national derbies and outreach festivals.

“This will be something that eventually, I hope, will be made available to competition managers, be made available to all the membership, and will really assist us in creating a system where somebody can look at the calendar … and really plan out where they want to go, what it’s going to take to get there, make sure that they’re not missing anything and hopefully prevent them from having to choose between two different properties because they’re on the same weekend,” McCormick said.

• Expanded national class offerings at Las Vegas National Horse Show

On Sept. 13, the Fédération Equestre Internationale announced that the Longines FEI World Cup qualifier scheduled to take place at the Las Vegas National had been canceled. The Marshall & Sterling/USHJA National Championships are held in conjunction with the Las Vegas National, Nov. 11-17 at the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, and later that day, USHJA announced that the show will now be produced by the Desert International Horse Park team instead of Blenheim EquiSports.

Without the previously planned two- and five-star FEI classes on the schedule, the new organizers have changed the national program to use all three competition arenas at the venue and allow more entries for the national show. McCormick said he hoped they will now be able to accept everyone from the waitlist. An updated schedule can be found here.

•  This year’s USHJA annual meeting will look different.

The USHJA will celebrate its 20^th anniversary during this year’s Annual Meeting, to be held Dec. 9-12 at the El Conquistador Tucson in Arizona, and the meeting format will look a lot different. In years past, the annual meeting has largely comprised committee and task force meetings spread throughout the week, and attendees had to pick which of the concurrent meetings to prioritize. This year, the committees and task forces will complete their rule change and specification updates prior to the meeting so that the meeting can focus on discussion and debate, and no meetings will overlap.

“In the past, sometimes you have to pick and choose which meetings you go to,” McCormick said. “This year we’re going to be one meeting at a time. Everybody’s invited; everybody’s involved. And the goal is to really get some good discussion going and get us all working towards improving not just our sport, but our industry, which is vital as we as we move into the future.”

The rule change forum, state of the association, and USHJA/USEF joint meetings for both hunters and jumpers will remain the same, but the remainder of the week will be broken into workshops for hunters, jumps, equitation, safety and affiliate organizations. For the first time, a licensed officials’ clinic will also be part of the schedule.

See a full schedule here.

• USHJA will re-evaluate qualifying and acceptance periods for its championships.

During the Q&A portion of the town hall, Lacy Stormes, a jumper trainer in Acton, California, brought up a concern relating to West region’s Zone Jumper Team Championships, which will be held Oct. 16-20 at the Temecula Valley National Fall 3 (California). She pointed out that while entries for the show closed Sept. 9, USHJA did not send out acceptance letters for those hoping to compete until Sept. 16. With pricey deposits and extensive logistics needed to attend the shows, she wants riders to know whether they will get to compete before putting in their entries.

Robin Rost Brown, who is the USHJA vice president and chair of the Hunter Working Group and Joint Equitation Task Force, pointed out that in most cases 45 days is the minimum amount of time needed to verify qualifications for championships. McCormick said that the qualifying period is set to allow as many riders as possible to have the opportunity to qualify, but agreed maybe that needs to be revisited for all championships.

“Maybe we need to look at our timing and it needs to be 50 or 60 days [before the closing date],” McCormick said. “I think that’ll be a discussion for the various task forces and the leadership to take a look and see if we’re actually doing ourselves a disservice by having the qualifying cut-off date be so close.”