Dear Region XII Members,

My name is Katelyn Edwards and I am honored to serve as the new President of the Region XII Youth Group. I am a member of the Ocala Club and I ride with Elizabeth Pizzonia’s Training Center in Ocala, FL. I am active in the show ring and I will be attending AHA Youth Nationals this year. Lyn Edwards and Marijo Kent-First are our new Region XII Youth Co-Youth Coordinators. Region XII Director CA Butler has made the growth and development of the Region XII Youth a priority! Our Youth group has gotten off to a great start! We formally met at the Region XII show in Perry Georgia in May and we discussed ideas on organizing a judging team for our region. We are very lucky to have so many talented adults in Region XII that have indicated a willingness to us learn to be effective and successful judges. A real pioneer in the Arabian horse industry, Mr. Gene Reichardt led an informal discussion about the importance of getting involved with the horse shows and working with the fellow youth members as a team to learn how to judge. The take home message was that we can ALL benefit from just participating in the process of leaning to judge Arabian horses. Horse judging competition involves not only placing a class of horses “1,2,3,4” but also learning to organize and to justify your reasons for the placing and then to present these “reasons” to a panel of experts at US Nationals in October. If we (as the youth of Region XII) work at this individually and then come together as a team we have the potential to be really competitive at US Nationals to 2007! We also had a pizza and ice-cream party to get to know all of our fellow youth members. After soliciting donations for some amazing items including tickets to Arabian Nights in Orlando, we drew names from the “hat” and announced the winners in Center ring during the evening session on Saturday. Region XII Youth raised over $600.00 dollars and all of the proceeds will be available for Youth activities in the future. Some plans for region XII are to make shirts for all the Region XII kids to wear, so be looking for these in the future. At Youth Nationals, we will all get to decorate the Region XII golf cart, which will be very exciting! I am very excited to be apart of this great region, and look forward to a fun year. We need all the help we can get! If you have any questions or ideas please e-mail at Kedwardsk1@aol.com

Thanks so much!
Katelyn Edwards