British Showjumping awards national accolade to junior academy 'shining star' Evie Hall

British Showjumping Academies aim to provide progressive coaching rather than one-off training sessions, using experienced BS coaches, to significantly improve riding skills and horse knowledge.

While an emphasis at the academies is that they should be “a fun and enjoyable environment”, previous winners of the NAF Shining Star Award have gone on to achieve significant sucesses.

Tatiane Mauree, who received the accolade in 2019, went on to claim gold at the Nations Cup Final, win the Pony Grand Prix in Wierden and was selected as part of British Equestrian’s Young Professional’s Programme.

While Evie took up riding four years ago, her coaches said Evie had been “an integral part of our academy for a few years”. Karen said: “We nominated Evie because she has shown commitment in coming to the academy and always makes everyone feel very welcome. To us she is a really valuable member of the community as well as showing great development with her own riding.

“Evie’s jumping skills have progressed tremendously, and she always gives 100 per cent every time she trains. She continues to put the skills she has learned into good practice and is able to discuss the positives and areas for improvement.

“Evie has also been a keen participant in progressing with the NAF skills book and has just recently completed her level 2 award. An important requirement at the academy is to be a good team player and Evie is most certainly a great example of this. She is polite and engaging and encourages others as well as praising other people’s successes.”

Aberford Primary School pupil Evie said when her mother, Sarah, showed her an email saying she had won the award she had been “really shocked, surprised but also proud of myself and my pony Florence”.

She said: “I have never won anything like this before, and I am so thankful to Karen and Alice from my Academy for their amazing coaching and support. Florence is my second pony, and together we have stepped up to jump and compete at a new level. She has been with me for a year this Easter and in that time we’ve been to lots of Pony Club events and British Showjumping training days, camps, and competitions as well as doing lots of hacking.

“Florence is a super pony. She is a skewbald and has some really cute markings. One of my favourites is on her bum so when you look back while riding it looks like a heart. She has a tiny snip on her nose which I like to call her boop mark and after she’s done well or is pleased with herself, she asks for a boop on her nose.”

Sarah said Evie had formed a strong partnership with Florence. She said: “You have to have a good relationship with your pont to be able to do good things. Evie just loves riding and everything to do with it.

"She loves doing the caring for the horses as well as the riding, doing dressage, going to pony club and would love to jump more competitively as she gets older. She’s just a normal kid with a pony on livery who works really hard and it’s nice that she’s got the recognition for that from this award.”

Sarah said Evie had entered numerous pony club competitions over the winter and had been working really hard training and going to unaffiliated jumping, so was looking forward to “a good summer of competition and fun”.

She said while Evie had represented her pony club at different competitions, her daughter would be very pleased if she could represent Yorkshire at the national show for BS junior academies. Sarah said: “We’re not in a position where we’re travelling long distances to big shows yet. Maybe one day! Evie would ride seven days a week if the pony didn’t need to have rest days, so rides about four times a week. A lot of that is hacking, doing fun stuff and pony club once a week or fortnight. The BS Academy works well with that. It’s great education. Every holiday there’s a junior academy day, so we try to go to those as much as we can.”

Evie added:” I am always so excited to go to the academy days because they have such a wide variety of training at some great equestrian centres. I always go home feeling like I’ve accomplished goals and set myself new ones. My favourite thing about my academy is there are so many supportive people, it is impossible to feel down. Our instructors always give me super guidance and ideas on ways to improve.”

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Delighted to have found out that she had been nominated for the NAF Shining Star Award,

Lisa Field from NAF added: “Evie, I can tell that you have a great eager-to-learn attitude and enthusiasm to improve and this wonderful attitude towards your training will help achieve your goals. The Yorkshire Academy sounds like a fun and supportive team which is the perfect environment for success. Well done on being awarded the NAF Shining Star and we wish you all the best for the year ahead!”