Every year the Board of Directors for IHSA volunteer to work the National Championships. The Board for 2012 was 56 strong. 5 That is 56 hotel rooms to organize, plus the logistics for that number of people and that was just IHSA officials! Many of these board members and coaches have been long time supporters of IHSA. Starting with founder Bob Cacchione who has served for 45 years, as of 2012 there were 60 members with 15 or more years of service and more than 30 members with 20+ years of service. IHSA is an association with strong roots that continues to grow.
“The hardest part of the entire thing was being the travel agent,” said McElveen. “Over 500 hotel rooms were reserved and with that came hotel room changes too. It was a job all by itself, making sure that everyone had a room on the day they were to arrive and that the hotel knew when they were leaving.” McElveen was tested when two weeks prior to the event she started receiving phone calls from people wanting to change their rooms or simply volunteering their time to assist with the event. With five hotels booked with IHSA staff and volunteers, McElveen scrambled to find an additional forty rooms to accommodate other volunteers travelling to the event from all over the county.
Selecting who would play the very important roles of Judges, Stewards and Managers began early in the planning process. In the January board meeting of 2011, the Western and Hunter seat committees both sat down and voted on the judges for Nationals. The Hunter Seat Stewards for Nationals must be IHSA Board members and for Western they choose Board members and outside stewards to serve. McElveen also had to select a Horse Show Manager. She let it be known to the horse show world that she was looking for a manager for IHSA Nationals in 2012. Bill Yeager a horse show manager from Warrenton, Virginia was one of several who expressed interest. He had experience in managing IHSA Nationals once before in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and seemed to be a good fit for the Raleigh event. “Billy was great!” commented McElveen. “One of the nicest things about working with Billy is I could call him on Monday and say we have to go to Raleigh this week, we need to meet, and he would say just let me know when and I will be there; and sure enough he was. He is also a good problem solver!” she said. “One of the biggest challenges we faced was getting the live video feed to work. This was something that had never been done at Nationals before. Twenty-four hours before the Opening Ceremonies we had difficulties with the live feed. Billy and I called around and found the top internet professionals in Raleigh to resolve a technical issue. With an hour until the start of the first class the live video feed was up and running.”
In the summer of 2010 McElveen started talking to hotels in the Raleigh area and spending about three days a week there meeting with them to discuss group rates and how big of an impact Nationals was going to make on the city. At the same time she met with restaurants in the area to discuss the catering needs of the event. She even persuaded hotels to offer free breakfast early in the morning for everyone even if they usually did not offer a complimentary breakfast.
McElveen needed a few key people to run the event outside of her existing staff, all of who would be heavily involved in some capacity, whether it be shipping horses, caring for the horses at home, caring for the 40+ horses in Raleigh which included St. Andrews horses and donor horses,6 working in hospitality, coaching, setting fences, decorating etc. The list of activities the equestrian staff was involved with was rather long! The first was important role to fill was a volunteer coordinator. It needed to be a very special person that could get everyone doing what he or she needed to be doing. This job title would be given to Laura Underhill Norment the Head Coach of the East Carolina University IHSA team and former St. Andrews Coach. Second an overall Barn Manager was imperative to the success of the show; someone who no matter what happened would smile and get the job done. The barn manager would be in charge of making sure everything in the barns was running smoothly, coordinating the arrival and departure of horses and arranging care for horses that were loaned but arrived with no care taker. McElveen had known Jennifer Sansbury for a few years through IHSA and asked her if she would be willing to be the Barn manager for Nationals. Jennifer accepted. Next individuals were needed for the famous draw table – the duck pond. McElveen knew she could call on current and former hunter seat instructors Heather Wile, Kira Gainey, Sarah Rhymer, and current dressage coach and faculty member Jackie Dwelle to be in charge of setting up, decorating and running the draw table.
The Awards coordinator position went to the mother daughter duo of Holly and Audrey Hayden, Audrey also being an alumnus of St. Andrews. “It had stayed in the back of my brain all those years that Holly had told me once before about how she had been in charge of the awards banquets for the Kansas Hunter Jumper Association, and I knew she would be perfect for the job” recalled McElveen. The awards coordinator would be a huge part of the event tracking all the returning trophies and organizing the awards for every class, usually through tenth or twelfth place. An equally important job is the silent auction coordinator due to the fact that the gathering of silent auction items begins one year ahead of the competition. Megan Taylor from Sewanee: The University of the south agreed to keep the coordinator position after she had successfully held the title for several previous years.
The Nationals horse show could not go on if it weren’t for the horses. “It’s a Championship. It doesn’t matter how pretty we have it decorated, or that there is a live feed, or even how nice we are, there is nothing we can do without the horses,” said McElveen. Horse Coordinators were needed to bring in quality horses for the competition. Eddie Federwisch, the Equestrian Program director at Virginia Intermont College and long time friend of McElveen’s was an obvious choice for the hunter seat horses. Federwisch has been a long time member and coach of IHSA teams and was the perfect choice to find the best hunter seat horses for the competition with his many contacts at schools within an eight hour drive of Raleigh. Carla Wennberg, St. Andrews IHSA Western Coach and AQHA Board Member, agreed to serve as the Horse Coordinator for the horsemanship and reining horses.
Social Media Intern, Kimberly Graves, took on the challenge of documenting the planning and organization of the IHSA National Championships that we hosted in Raleigh, NC last May.
Part three explained how the Southern Hospitality Theme was chose. Next week Part Six - Horse Show Mgt. cont.
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