Michelle Baker
We held our first event for the Melissa Hole Royal Lepage Westwin Kids Buckle Run at the Smokin True Ranch on Aug. 25 and hope to continue youth events like this in the future.
It was a great success with 39 entries and 34 riders. We lost a few entries due to the wildfire smoke, but the numbers still exceeded my expectations with youth travelling from Meritt, Mclure, Kamloops, 100 Mile House, Barriere and Clearwater to attend this event designed just for youth.
My hope was to have youth gather from all over for a day filled with fun, focused on them and I believe we reached that goal.
Melissa Hole from Royal Lepage Westwin sponsored a substantial amount of money to get this idea off the ground and make it a reality. Hole has sponsored many events for our youth in the last few years through the Wells Gray Riders Association when I was the gymkhana coordinator along with other events and causes not only in our community, but surrounding areas as well.
Hole has invested her time and money into the Kamloops women’s shelter, Westsyde kids’ soccer team, holds an annual shelter foundation golf tournament and so much more.
She is always investing in our youth and her generosity is overwhelming—we can’t thank her enough for continually supporting us with kindness and giving us the means to provide amazing prizes for our events.
Ted and Dawn Schultz from Smokin True Ranch have been key in the success of this event, providing us with such a beautiful venue to hold our event. They worked hard to prepare the grounds and arena for this event just so we had a place for all of the kids to come.
Ted and Dawn not only invested a lot of time into the venue, but money as well and did not ask for anything in return.
Part of their vision is to see youth have a place to come and have fun and improve their equestion skills. Smokin True Ranch is a top notch facility that will continue to improve and grow in the future. Contact Dawn if you are interested in holding an event at their venue.
Doug Borrows generusly sponsored us the use of a brand new tractor for the event and leading up to the event he has supplied use of trucks, machines and material. We appreciate the continued support from Borrows, who is always investing in our youth and our community.
I would also like to thank the long list of volunteers who dedicated their time and hard work at the event—I could not have done it without you.
We had five beautiful handcrafted buckles to award and every child left with a prize. We ran a combination barrel/pole event for the buckles and had several fun games the youth competed in.
All proceeds were awarded back to the top five competitors; winners of the buckles are as follows:
Leadline: first was Colin Choney, second was Maria Gallot, third was Heidi Fraser, fourth was Weston Salle and fifth was Bryce Gallot.
Buckaroo: first was Lee Fraser, second was Mason Ward, third was Ava MacVicar, fourth was Eric Fraser and fifth was Zoey MacVicar.
Peewee: first was Maya Starrs, second was Kelsey Starrs, third was Alexis Nelson, fourth was Martha Taylor and fifth was Rylan Baker.
Junior: first was Laci Hancock, second was Jessica Stephens, third was Willow Greywolf, fourth was Rose Thon and fifth was Paige Weninger.
Novice: first was Katie Biagioni and second was Mia Thompson.
I would like to make this youth event an annual event and look forward to improving and bulding on it in the future, recruiting new sponsors and more youth from all over. If this is an event you would be interested in sponsoring please contact me, Michelle Baker.
