The horsemanship committee is one of the hardest-working committees of the Pageant. Their work starts before the Pageant begins in lining up the horses from the Stock Contractors that will have horses at the WNFR, and then “selecting” them after watching them being ridden a day before the competition. One committee member, Johna Niedfelt, has been an outstanding volunteer, and her fellow committee members say she should get the "volunteer spotlight."
The morning of the competition, the committee is up and at’em by 4:15am, preparing to go to the arena where they will meet the horses (transportation already having been arranged for horses) and to begin preparing them for the competition: cleaning, brushing, saddling, bridling and warming up. So by the time the girls arrive at 9am and the show is ready to start… the committeeepeople have already been up for 5 hours!
Johna’s job during the competition is to help the contestants when they get on the horse: hold the horse, adjust the stirrups, pull their pant legs down, brush the dust off of their boots, and make sure that all of the equipment on the horse is good to go. While they had 14 horses to compete off of, there were only 12 Court’s Saddles… meaning that there was a lot of saddle changing going on behind the scenes.
Johna, our hat’s off to you for the outstanding job that you do as a volunteer on the horsemanship committee!
~ Jody
