📂 The BreyerFest Files📂
I'm a firm believer in giving back to the hobby. Volunteer your time, volunteer your knowledge, donate items to a show's raffle, help with setup or breakdown for shows and swap meets. Hobbies are communities, and they are shaped and supported by the people within them.
This year, I was fortunate to spend most of my BreyerFest week volunteering.
I've been volunteering at NAN since 2022. In both 2022 and 2024, I was a steward, meaning I was responsible for checking entries in each class to be sure they were registered in that class, alerting the registrar when horses were missing from the class so they could be entered, and rounding up the judges for each class. This year, I got a title upgrade! I was the Assistant Head Steward, which means I was in charge of keeping the clipboards organized and stewarding classes as needed. Tuesday mostly felt like I was chained to the Steward's table - the judge's sheets needed filled out for that day, so I was constantly scribbling the information needed on them.
Wednesday was a little easier - with the time waiting for performance to finish on Tuesday, we were able to get all of Wednesday's sheets filled out and in order. Which was good, since Wednesday NAN has to end earlier than the other days - we were able to load clipboards for the next classes as fast as they were returned. I even had time to steward a few of the classes on Wednesday, which helped keep things moving.
I also had a secret volunteer position for NAN, which you'll only know if you 1) saw the NAN program and 2) read the NAN program. That's right, I contributed articles for the NAN program! I was asked to edit a portion of my documentation post for the program, and I additionally created two judging clinics. Not to worry if you didn't attend NAN - those posts will be freely available to everyone. My two August judging clinics are the ones that appeared in the NAN program.
This year marked the first year I volunteered for Breyer. I had applied once before in 2024, without success. I decided to try again for this year, and I was thrilled to be selected! I had two positions over the weekend. I was a Docent and a Seminar Assistant. Well, I was supposed to. My Seminar Assistant shift ended up being approximately 45 minutes due to the last seminar on Saturday being canceled. I ended up swinging back over to the ticket booth where I had been previously that day to finish out that shift as a Docent.
I found the experience to be very rewarding overall. The majority of my Docent shifts were at the ticket booth, and it was nice but also scary to be the first face people associated with the event. I spent a lot of time directing people to model pick-up and assuring them that they could leave the park and come back without scanning their ticket, but I also got to recommend people my favorite things to do at BreyerFest. I got to watch kid's faces light up when they were given a surprise blanket for their horses (and even hand some out myself!)
Would I volunteer again? Absolutely. Would I volunteer for multiple events across the week where I'm also showing five days? Perhaps not. Both volunteering experiences were very rewarding, and I have no regrets about them, but it was a hard week, with little time for sleep or shopping or decompressing. I did get to have some fun experiences (more on that next week!), but I was a little stressed to my mental limit by the end of the week. Luckily, next year is not a NAN year, so I'll likely apply to volunteer at BreyerFest again.
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