Report on Prince Philip Cup Junior mounted games, 2 December 2006, Werribee, Melbourne

Trainings

Two trainings were provided for the team by our coach, Scott Borland. The first was an optional training. The second was the official training on the Monday and Tuesday directly before we left. The optional training was fantastic as it allowed Scott to see where we were at in terms of our games skills. Also, by having an earlier training it meant that we could go home and practice what we had been taught. When we all returned to Cambridge in November there was an obvious improvement in all members of the team.

The sight seeing days in Australia

The two days that we spent sight seeing around Australia were a lot of fun. The first day we visited an old gold mining town called Sovereign Hill. All teams had a fun day which included a demonstration of Gold Smelting, Panning for Gold and going for tours down old underground mines. The NZ team dressed up in period costume and had a black and white photograph taken. This was the highlight of the day for me and I thought it was great that the whole team, Scott and Phillipa included, all took part in this together.

On the second day we visited the Victoria market and Scienceworks. The Victoria market was lots of fun. We shopped 'til we dropped :-). Scienceworks was very interesting and had a lot of fun interactive activities to try out.

The Competition

We were all excited and apprehensive on the morning of the competition. All the teams arrived by bus at the Werribee show grounds and were greeted by the sight of many different horses and ponies that we were to be riding that day. We had a gear check then we mounted up to try out our first group of ponies and have our mounted parade. After this it was straight into the racing. We had a great start by winning the bending race, then we continued the day with some good races, and some not so good. After we had played all twenty four races the scores were totaled up and it was announced that there was a tie between the New Zealand team and the team from Queensland. The race used in the play off was the Canadian race and through excellent team work and riding the New Zealand team came out on top to take 4th place.

Thank you to NZPCA for accepting this invitation from Pony Club Australia, and for making this opportunity available. Thank you to Pat Perkins and all the other selectors for selected such a fantastic and fun team. Thank you to Keith Scarlett for organizing flights and accomodation for the team. Also a huge thank you to the Patron of NZPCA, Bruce Forbes for coming over to Australia to support us, it was greatly appreciated.

Lauren Currie
Captain, NZPCA Junior Mounted Games Team 2006