Although we were in a new venue this year and a totally new part of the country USDAA Nationals were once again a highlight of the year for me. :-)
It was really great to get to see and compete with essentially a whole "new" group of dog and handler teams! Since the Nationals moved East, not east coast, just east, there were a lot of new faces this year.
I know a lot of the people who were showing, however, I have not had the pleasure of competing with many of these people for quite some time.
The caliber of talent was definitely as good as years past and it was always exciting! Well, as exciting as it could be with a significant amount of down time. I must say this years Nationals were not without disappointments, I was just fortunate enough to have had some truly awesome runs with my dogs and being able to bring home some bling definitely allows you to forgive other flaws!
The atmosphere this year was not that of a National Championship in my opinion, it was more a very large trial or even Regional with very high caliber talent.
The energy that usually accompanies the National Finals is usually much greater, people are more involved and hang out to watch/cheer more.
There is generally a much greater sense of comaraderie than was evident this year and truly missing out on the evening events "under the lights" was a bit of a disappointment.
I think, however, the biggest disappointment was the lame turn out for the GP Finals. It is the premiere event, the reason we all come and to be honest it was not only anti climactic but just plain sad for the finalists.
Folks practically burned rubber to get out of there Sunday morning and they were rolling up the rings around the finalists before they even competed.
I stayed until the bitter end and was very glad that I did, it was a very competitive finals and a pleasure to watch, mostly though I wanted to be there to cheer everyone on!
I do not fault folks for leaving, it was 6 long days of inhaling dust and traversing the expo from one end to the other trying to find something to do!
Next year fewer days, less dust and a more cohesive schedule would make things 100% better!
I also vote for Perf. Speed jumping, Steeplechase, PGP and GP finals all be held as evening events finishing out the weekend with the team relay on Sunday morning and off we go!
Everyone wants to play in the night time events and these events always draw a much bigger crowd!
In all honesty, I, too head to Nationals to make Finals, ALL finals but if I have to choose the most exciting it would be Steeplechase because we play at night!
How fortunate for me I made the Steeplechase Finals over the GP :-) Yes, there was a bit of sarcasm there!! I was a bit disappointed to be "in the stands" for GP finals but crap happens I guess.
As I said earlier though, I had a GREAT Nationals! SoBe decided to show me just how awesome she is and made it very clear that she is now wearing big girl underpants and I need to start handling her as if she were a big girl! Message received and so I will try to be the handler that she is asking for :-)
What a special girl she is!! She not only held her own all week but she finished out the week with a 6th place in jumpers, this was accomplished in the 22" class which had 331 dogs! Not to be out done, her daddy won that class!
Wally also made Steeplechase finals and finished 5th overall, I am ecstatic! Wally placed in the top 12 in 2 other classes as well and along with Maze got to play in relay finals!
Maze had a great Nationals from the standpoint of having fantastic runs, not such a great Nationals if you count the 1 glitch that occurred in all 3 tournament classes that kept him on the sidelines ultimately. Oh well, there is always next year!
I am so incredibly excited for next year!! Maze and Wally are running faster and better than ever, SoBe is a grown up girl and really ready to start competing and Danger seems to be on the mend! Yes, it will be a long road for him, but we are moving forward!
Well, I am off to bed big weekend teaching coming up and I am still recovering from the marathon we called Nationals this year.
Congrats to everyone who qualified for Nationals, here's to next year!!
1 comment:
Congratulations on all your dog's fabulous successes. I even got a twitter account just to I could get the play by play and cheer you on from home. The runs I saw were fabulous and OMG SoBe's DW running contacts are amazing!
It is disappointing about Grand Prix finals. I'm glad I was home with my little twitter account envisioning the finals under the lights with everyone cheering like crazy like I saw last year. Maybe next year.
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