Judging Dressage for Kids/ponies

[mickey]

My YO runs pony days for her clients where she has groups of up to 10 kids doing stable management, having group lessons, gymkhana games etc during the Easter holidays.
Next week she is running a dressage event where there will be 8 kids (12 yrs to 16 yrs) or so riding the school ponies or bringing their own. They will ride prelim 4. She has asked me to judge. I have requested a scribe.
I've competed myself at dressage (prelim level), have a reasonable eye for dressage at the higher levels. Judging this fun event should be good but I am worried I am going to mark the early kids down (or up) as having not done this before I have no baseline to judge them against. Any tips????? What are the main things you would be looking for?

 

[emma69]

I used to run stable mangement courses, and as their Friday 'end of week' show, they got to choose what they wanted to do - for my sins I sometimes let them do dressage or a mini 1 day event (SJ was far easier, but anything rather than formation jumping - I swear my future grey hairs will be down to that!!!!). There was usually a wide variety of ages and pony ability so put more emphasis on riding accurate school figures, getting good transitions, and position - which they should all be able to do regardless of the pony's ability. I used to have children from 8-16 on these course, and tried to emphasise the positive elements in the comments section, as well as some constructive criticism. I tended to put less emphasis on the areas that rely on pony ability - it's not fair if some child got stuck with the stiff arthritic pony whilst another is on something that used to do medium affilliated - that was the main difference marking the kids than you would get in a proper dressage comp - not saying my way is the only way, I can see arguments for following a strict prelim judging approach, but this worked for me.

 

[lucemoose]

Keep all your sheets next to you incase you start to alter your marks as you go through the comp. Like emma69 says, judge on the child's ability rather than the ponies, unless you know the ponies and know who is trickier/easier/completley brain-dead!
Make sure the comments box is positive and crit is constructive, as the test sheet is something they take away from the day, and children are easily put off from dressage!

 

[mickey]

Thanks for your help. I am doing this test judging tomorrow. I have decided to focus on accuracy and riding primarily.

 

[teapot]

God that takes me back - used to write for the kids dressage test at the summer camps for years.

A lot of the comments were on the likes of good shaped circles, kept close to markers, good transitions, pony going nice and forward etc, nice position etc. Obviously with the littlies it is harder so we always put lots of encouragement and kept it simple.

What you have to remember is when you're giving the mark, you've kinda got to bump it up for them. So for what would be say a 4 or 5 for an adult riding the same test, you'd bump it up to a 6 or 7.

Kids really like seeing the feedback. We used to have their attention after they had their sheets back in order to give out the next set of rosettes etc. I've got one of my tests back when I was a kid on a summer camp and would be happy to scan it in if you wanted to see what's written etc

 

[mickey]

Thanks. I thought only today that if I was thinking a movement was worth 6 I should mark it up to a 7. Because I am used to watching prelim tests ridden to a high standard (and I am naturally quite a critical person!) So tomorrow I am going to be very positive and try to get the kids enthused about dressage. I have 5 very different riding school horses taking part so really I am not going to pay too much attention to the subtelties of how the horse is going.