MSU Extension Horses

Transcript

Gwyn Shelle:                ... Hello everyone, and welcome to the Michigan Sate University Extension Equine Team and My Horse University's podcast series. I'm Gwyn Shelle and it's great to have you here toady for this episode.

Gwyn Shelle:                Today, we're gonna be talking about horse judging teams. And I'm here today with Taylor Fabus. Taylor is an extension educator with Michigan State University Extension and also is the coach of the MSU horse judging team. Hi, Taylor.

Taylor Fabus:                Hi.

Gwyn Shelle:                It's great to have you here today.

Taylor Fabus:                Thank you.

Gwyn Shelle:                So first off Taylor, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your experience with competitive horse judging.

Taylor Fabus:                Sure, I'd love to. So I grew up competing with my own horses on the American Quarter Horse circuit. I competed regionally and nationally. So that's kind of my background and where a lot of my knowledge came from. And then as far as competitive horse judging teams are concerned, I really didn't know much about them until I was in graduate school working on my masters here at Michigan State University. And my major professors, your father-in-law, actually encouraged me to help out with the horse judging team.

Taylor Fabus:                So that was my first introduce to it, I was very novice, very green when I started. And that was about 11, 12 years ago. And it's just grown from there, my commitment to it and my love for it.

Gwyn Shelle:                What are some benefits of being a member of a horse judging team? Why should someone spend the time doing this?

Taylor Fabus:                So that was something, like I had mentioned, I was pretty unfamiliar with until I started helping coach the team. So I knew a lot of the things that judges were looking for from an exhibitor, but I didn't necessarily know that there was an opportunity for both youth and collegiate judging teams for horse judging kiddos to demonstrate their knowledge and compete against others to do so.

Taylor Fabus:                So when I became involved with it, I became immersed in not only the content knowledge, and obviously that's something the kids are really gaining from that. So personally, my experience as a horse judge has made me a lot better exhibitor and rider because I know what the judges are looking for. But beyond that, it's amazing to see the growth in a student. Not only their team member skills and being able to work in that sort of team work environment, which is not something equestrians get an opportunity to do a lot. But also their communication skills, their networking skills with industry professionals. Those are some of the fringe benefits that really become the best part of being on a competitive horse judging team.

Gwyn Shelle:                And for those who may not be familiar with competitive horse judging, can you describe what happens at a contest? What kind of classes do they judge, that type of thing.

Taylor Fabus:                Competitive horse judging is kind of unique. First of all, there are opportunities for youth all the way up through the college level. And what a contest looks like is they set up a mini horse show for those participants. And there's only ever four horses in a class. So that makes things predictable at least, and it actually does make it quite a bit easier. If you go on and become a horse show judge, you find that larger classes are much more difficult.

Taylor Fabus:                So the students are only ever expected to sort four horses. Typically about half the contest is halter classes, or classes that are judging the confirmation of a horse based on their breed standard. And then the other half of the class is performance classes. So that might be judging a a horse's quality of movement in a Western pleasure, or a hunter under saddle class, or it might be an equitation or horsemanship class. So there's a lot of variety in those performance classes, so students really have to be prepared to see a lot of different things, a lot of different types of horses depending on the contest they're going to.

Taylor Fabus:                And then following the placing of those classes. So the students all turn in, the students or the youth all turn in cards that have their placings marked down on. Then those placings are scored against a set of official judges. They decide what the official placings are. So they receive scores based on how close they were to the official placing.

Taylor Fabus:                And then probably the scariest part of the contest for participants is the oral reason portion. So essentially they go into a room and they deliver a two minute speech to an official about why they placed the class the way they did. And it's that scary oral reasons portion that really becomes the area of growth for students and youth.

Gwyn Shelle:                Excellent. So, in terms of preparing for a contest, I know from being a past 4H horse judging coach that a lot of work goes into this. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Taylor Fabus:                Sure. So as it would seem, anything that's worth doing is a lot of work, right? So you know that from a coach's perspective. But it involves a lot of practice, even our MSU horse judging team members. They do have course time that they practice, but they also have to travel to horse shows, and travel to farms. And we're really lucky in Michigan to have a really supportive horse industry that allows students to come out, view their horses, practice their placings, talk to judges, things like that. So there's a lot of practice that goes into it.

Taylor Fabus:                And then the oral reasons portion is, we practice a lot of video reasons, written reasons to really up the content value and hopefully get those scores as close to 50, which would be a perfect score, as possible.

Gwyn Shelle:                Well you said a lot of work has to go into it, but I imagine on the other side it's also a lot of fun for these participants as well, in terms of building friendships and things like that.

Taylor Fabus:                Yeah, so students normally go into this pretty hesitant, especially about the oral reasons portion of it. I mean there's not very many more intimidating things than going to talk to an official judge that already selected the correct placings and tell them why you think your placings are correct. So that's a pretty intimidating thing, but through that nerve wracking experience comes a lot of growth. And you'll find that students, after their judging team experience, look back on that with great fondness and nostalgia.

Taylor Fabus:                And we've been really lucky and I think you're a great example of that, that a lot of past judging team members then go on to coach either 4H or collegiate judging teams in the future. So they see the value in it from their experience, and they wanna help make that an opportunity for other kiddos.

Gwyn Shelle:                So you mentioned that, for collegiate judging, there's a class of course that students can go through. And what about our youth? So if we had a youth member out there that was listening to this right now, how could they get involved in a judging team?

Taylor Fabus:                So Michigan has a state level 4H and FFA horse judging contest at the end of each March. So that opportunity exists. So you can either through your FFA chapter, or through your county 4H program, create a team. There are a lot of free online resources for coaches, I'm working on some curriculum myself to hopefully get out there. So Michigan 4H has curriculum available in this area.

Taylor Fabus:                But also, I would suggest joining some Facebook groups. So the National Horse Judging Team Coaches Association is a Facebook page which involves a lot of different coaches from around the nation, and they actually even have an online store where you can buy videos to help judging and help with your team.

Taylor Fabus:                So you don't, if you wanna be a coach, you don't necessarily have to be an expert like you and I in the area of horse judging. But if you're able to seek out those resources and share them with team members, that's the hardest step.

Gwyn Shelle:                So if there's a youth member who maybe has been involved in horse judging in 4H or FFA, or really any youth that is interested in going to college where they can focus on horses, what opportunities out there for that and for being a part of a collegiate judging team?

Taylor Fabus:                So that was probably one of the most surprising things for me when I jumped feet first into this collegiate judging world is that there are a ton of opportunities throughout our nation. So certainly in the mid-west it may not be as common and as popular, but we do have opportunities around here. Some junior colleges have judging teams in the mid-west. I'm thinking of some in Illinois and around some surrounding states. And certainly here at Michigan State University, we have those opportunities.

Taylor Fabus:                But students, whether or not they've been on that 4H or FFA team like we've talked about, they can seek out those options. They don't necessarily have to be an animal science student, but they can look for those opportunities, join the judging teams. And even sometimes there are scholarship opportunities for some of those bigger funded schools that have larger judging teams. So there will be students that compete in 4H, FFA perhaps, and then they'll go to a junior college and be on that team. And then they can go to a senior college and be on their collegiate judging team. So it can really be quite a career in the horse judging competitions.

Gwyn Shelle:                Are there also associations that may have a judging team as well?

Taylor Fabus:                Yeah, that's a great question that I forgot to mention. So there are, certainly through American Quarter Horse Association, there are some affiliate states that compete, like the Michigan Quarter Horse Association, for example. They could create a team and compete at the AQHA world show. And the same goes for the Arabian Horse Association. So there are lots of junior AHA teams. I can think of a few off the top of my head right now the compete at those national contests each year.

Taylor Fabus:                So if you don't have a 4H club in your area, or you don't have an FFA chapter, a lot of those breed organizations have these opportunities too.

Gwyn Shelle:                Yeah, definitely. I was on the Arabian horse judging team when I was a youth, and also on the horse judging and [inaudible] team here at MSU. And I will say that definitely, like you mentioned before, probably some of the fondest memories of being a part of those groups and throughout college definitely were the friendships I made in my judging team members, we're still friends today. And definitely makes an impact on your life, that is certainly true.

Taylor Fabus:                Yeah. And the fringe benefits just go far and wide. So certainly there are those friendships made, you become an expert in your field, but also you learn things like networking and fundraising, and all those sorts of fringe benefits that really become even more valuable when you look back on years later.

Taylor Fabus:                So I would definitely suggest trying to be on a judging team. We have a variety of judging teams, not just horse judging teams. You mentioned livestock, we also have meats judging, dairy judging. There's all sorts of different opportunities in this sort of judging vane that students should try to take advantage of.

Gwyn Shelle:                Well, Taylor, thanks for taking the time to chat with me today. This has been great. And for anyone out there, if you are interested in possibly joining a 4H horse judging team or a collegiate judging team, the collegiate one here at Michigan State, feel free to go ahead and contact Taylor. And Taylor, maybe you wanna share your contact information.

Taylor Fabus:                Sure, I'd love to chat with anybody about the competitive judging opportunity. So my email, which is problem the easiest way to get a hold of me, is T-E-N-L-E-N-T-A at MSU.edu. So that's tenlenTA@msu.edu.

Gwyn Shelle:                All right, perfect. Well thanks again, Taylor, and really appreciate the time you took today.

Taylor Fabus:                Thanks for having me, Gwyn.