Sonoma Coastal EquesTraining Center Pony Club Riding Center (SCEC) Captures 2024 USPC Flash Teamwork Award

By Sarah Evers Conrad, USPC Marketing and Communications Director

The USPC Flash Teamwork Award is given each year to a club, center, region, individual, or equine who displays excellent teamwork. Cathy Aranosian, owner of Flash, sponsored the award after her club members worked together to submit Flash as the USPC 50th Anniversary Breyer model.

Every year, Pony Club members and leaders submit essays to the USPC National Office for their nominations on who they believe should win the Flash Teamwork Award for a special team-building experience or for a club/center, region, individual, or horse who is known for their team-building. After that, a panel of judges carefully evaluates each essay and selects a winner.

The 2024 award was chosen in December 2024, but an official announcement wasn’t made until the 2025 USPC Convention in Traverse City, Mich., during the Meeting of the Corporation, which was held January 25, 2025. Bo Varnado, Chair of the Marketing and Communications Chair, presented the award.

The 2024 Flash Award winner is Sonoma Coastal EquesTraining Center Pony Club Riding Center (SCEC) in the Sierra Pacific Region, nominated by Nathalie Guion-Buechley, who is the Center Administrator, Facility Manager and Owner, along with the Pony Club members of SCEC. SCEC has been a Pony Club Riding Center since 2021. Accepting for SCEC was Melissa Dabadie, a member of the Sierra Pacific Region.

Here is their essay about their Center’s teamwork efforts to fundraise for the 2024 USPC Festival. 

Our Sonoma Coastal EquesTraining Center (SCEC) Pony Club Riding Center members have a lot of fun with each other and their ponies, and they also love a good challenge. It is part of our riding center’s philosophy to continually plan for the development of our young riders, taking on bigger challenges as they grow. I was so excited for them in 2023 when they set the goal of qualifying for the USPC Championships in Kentucky the next year and delighted when five of our members qualified in riding disciplines: Nina, Audrey, Sara, Allie, and Marie-Charlotte (MC). A sixth member, Elle, qualified in Quiz.

Taking their ponies to USPC Championships was part of a natural progression for our team. MC and Audrey had done Championships in Quiz in 2021, and four members of our team took their ponies to the USPC Championships West in 2022. All were growing in their horsemanship skills and had formed a supportive group of friends who worked well together as a team. I knew they were ready now to focus on the bigger challenge of the 2024 USPC Championships with their ponies.

Soon, though, a new reality set in. Getting five ponies from California almost 2,500 miles and across the Rocky Mountains to Lexington, Kentucky, was going to be no small task. And it was going to be expensive. The team’s parents were eager to help, but the expense was significant for many. So, we met and began to plan. We knew from the beginning that we didn’t want anyone to be left out because of finances, so we would all need to work together to get the whole team there.

Starting in October 2023, we began to brainstorm and create projects to raise money. All of our team members pitched in, along with parents, and other members of our Pony Clubs. Impressed with the team’s commitment, other riders at our barn wanted to help out too, and soon things began to come together.

Over the winter, Nina and her dad, Jean Luc, put on Farm Fit workouts. Members of our barn community, along with their friends and families, made donations and participated in workout challenges. It was a great way to stay fit and have fun together during the rainy winter months.

Allie and her dad, Jamey, built a GoFundMe page, and all the kids shared the links with friends and family. We learned how many people in our community wanted to support this ambitious and hardworking group of kids.

Another great fundraising idea was cleaning tack. Audrey and MC are pros at turning out spotless tack after all their years of Pony Club, and it turned out there were a lot of busy adult riders at our barn who were happy to make a donation in exchange for shiny saddles and bridles the next time they came out to ride!

All of these efforts brought success, but the team had been working for months. and we were not yet close to our goal. We knew we needed to come up with something even bigger if we were going to get everyone to Kentucky.

Elle and her dad, Garrett, have the gift of being amazing cooks. We decided to create a Valentine’s Day gourmet dinner for 20 people and charge for tickets. We got a lot of the food and wine donated and transformed the tack room of our barn into a romantic setting. Our Pony Club youth members learned how to wait on tables and provided formal service for the fancy evening. Some of them have musical talent, too, and they provided entertainment. Many members of our barn community joined in this special event.

The evening was an epic success and brought in even more money. We were making progress, but we still had a long way to go to get to our goal, and summer was getting closer. We held a meeting with parents and Pony Club members all together to take a hard look at all we had done and figure out if we would really be able to make this happen. The one thing we knew is that we wanted to make it possible for all the kids who had qualified to go together as a team. No one should be left behind!

We decided to pool all of our energy and effort for one more blowout event: another gourmet dinner, this time for 40 people with a silent auction added on. Our kids jumped into action, reaching out to friends, family, and local businesses for donations. Even though Elle ended up not being able to go to Kentucky, she and her dad, Garrett, volunteered to cook again. Impressed by the kids’ spirit and dedication, our barn community stepped up to make donations, buy tickets, and invite their friends. Word had gotten out about the Valentine’s Day dinner, and everyone wanted to be at the social event of the season. The theme we chose was “Dinner en Blanc,” and we invited everyone to dress in white for this special evening.

We were lucky to get some really amazing donations: art and jewelry made by local artists, flights on a private plane, a boat tour of the San Francisco Bay, a session with a professional horse photographer, a week in a vacation home on a lake, and more! Two of our senior Pony Club members took over the auction setup and also created an online auction page to build excitement and give out-of-town friends a way to participate.

On the day of the event, parents and kids from the Pony Club set up tables and decorations, transforming our ranch into a 4-star restaurant. Our brave chef cooked in the barn kitchen, and the team did a really professional job with the table service. Betting got fierce on some of the auction items, and the kids sold tickets for a 50/50 raffle throughout the evening. It was a lot of work, but the event really brought all the kids together, showing them how much they could accomplish as a team, and also how much support they have from the parents and community. Younger members of the club participated also and were inspired for the future.

At the end of the night, together with our other fundraising efforts, we had raised $20,000, enough to get all five horses to Kentucky! After all their hard work to qualify for Championships, I am so proud of the way our team put in the extra effort to make it a reality, and even prouder of their determination to achieve this dream as a team, all together.