GMO

Promoting Diversity in Dressage

USDF task force’s mission: increase diversity, equity, and inclusion

By Penny Hawes

An ongoing challenge for many of USDF’s group-member organizations (GMOs) is to expand outreach in order to grow membership.

In recent years, this issue has taken on additional significance in the wider equestrian world. It’s not only about dressage clubs reaching out to equestrians in other disciplines; it’s also about finding ways to attract people who historically have been underrepresented in our sports.

In the wake of protests sparked by the May 2020 murder by police of a Black man, George Floyd, both organizations and individual citizens have grappled with the concept of

systemic racism and have strived to learn more about how to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their communities, workplaces, schools, and other milieus.

US Equestrian (USEF), our country’s national equestrian federation, began by examining 20 years of member-demographic data. Its statistics indicated that the percentage of members who self-identified as white—95% in 2000—was still the overwhelming majority in 2019, at 91%. Clearly, changes needed to be made.

In June 2020, USEF announced its intention to create a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Action Plan. Strategies developed as part of the plan, which is available on the USEF website (usef.org), range from marketing efforts and DEI training for USEF employees to the creation of a grants program for community riding centers, especially those that serve underrepresented and underserved communities. USDF Develops a DEI Task Force During her term, USDF immediate past president Lisa Gorretta established a USDF DEI Task Force, to build on the USEF’s efforts and to hone a USDF-focused approach to DEI.

“As a USEF affiliate, we wanted to follow their lead and leverage their

resources,” says USDF marketing and communications director Ross Creech, “so that, once USEF’s DEI efforts began and their working group was established, we were able to better identify USDF’s role and specific goals.”

Creech, who is the USDF staff liaison to the task force, says that the group’s objective is to “evaluate USDF’S current state regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, and make suggestions that could be implemented to improve its position.” The economics of scale give more weight to the USEF’s endeavor—“USEF is in a better position than USDF, as an affiliate, to truly impact diversity in equestrian sport,” says Creech. But “to try to measure the perception of our members regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion within USDF and the dressage community,” the USDF plans to conduct a membership survey “and to follow that up with another survey after the implementation” of its first round of initiatives, he says.

Chairing the USDF DEI Task Force is Colorado-based USEF “R” dressage judge, “R” dressage sporthorse breeding judge, and “r” Westerndressage judge Gwen Ka’awaloa. The other current members are USDF Region 7 director Carol Tice, elite dressage competitor and 2015 Special Olympics World Games dressage judge Lehua Custer, and adult-amateur rider and high-performance horse owner Wendy Sasser, all of California; New Jersey-based para-dressage athlete Alanna Flax-Clark; USEF dressage technical delegates Andrea Davenport-Himel of Mississippi and Michelle King of Virginia; Floridabased dressage trainer Lisa El-Ramey; longtime Northern Ohio Dressage Association member Gwen Samuels of Ohio; and USDF bronze medalist and USDF L program participant Patrick Wolfe of Indiana, who also serves on the USEF Member Services Council.

When Gorretta approached Ka’awaloa in January 2021, “I kind of picked her brain about why she chose me,” Ka’awaloa says. “There are a lot of facets. When you talk DEI, you’re talking people who are worried about racial appearances. The big thing that I told her from day one was that we were not going to make this just about race. I’m a mixed race. I was raised in the Hawaiian islands, where being of mixed race is normal. Nobody cares. Actually, being white is less normal there. That being said, we’re very, very aware of racial problems. But I told Lisa that I would not play the game if I had to make it all about race.

ALL WELCOME: New USDF task force aims to welcome all kinds of riders to the dressage community

“Fortunately,” Ka’awaloa continues, “I have a team that agrees, and that makes it easier. Making it about race, it’s got to exclude somebody. So the whole team was all for the idea that we weren’t going to make it directly about that. We were going to circumvent the word race by concentrating on inclusivity. So being inclusive is what we’ve wanted to do, and the equity part came with some of the programs we created that we presented to the [USDF] Executive Board.” Areas of Focus Expanding the availability of paraequestrian dressage classes at dressage shows is one of the DEI Task Force’s initial goals.

“You hear a ton about para if you ride FEI but no talk about para at schooling shows or at the lower-level shows,” Ka’awaloa says, referring to the international-level para-dressage competition featured at FEI World Championships and Paralympic Games.

Ka’awaloa’s own GMO, the Rocky Mountain Dressage Society, offers para-dressage classes at its USEFlicensed/USDF-recognized dressage competition, but some show managers “are asking, ‘How are we going to do that?’” she says. “This has been a focus of DEI from day one.”

To help those show managers, the task force is compiling a “suggestion list on what you need to have for a para class, and what para riders would appreciate being offered,” Ka’awaloa says. The list will be included in a DEI packet that will be distributed to GMOs and published on the USDF website.

Carol Tice, a former California Dressage Society (CDS) president, “has been bringing a lot of ideas from CDS, including managing para classes,” Ka’awaloa says. According to Tice, “Our next CDS-only show is offering every para class there is.”

Some show managers have “been afraid to offer para-dressage classes because of fear, mainly about the facilities,” Tice says. “They didn’t think that they were going to be compliant—that they would be turned in.” But USEF “S” dressage judge and FEI 3* para-equestrian dressage judge David Schmutz of California has been encouraging show managers to “Just offer the classes; you’ll be fine,” she says.

The USDF does not involve itself on a national level with Western dressage, but some GMOs—and, by extension, the USDF DEI Task Force—have found that offering Western-dressage classes at unrecognized (schooling) shows is an effective means of outreach. During the GMO education session, “Diversifying Your GMO to Attract More Members,” held during the virtual 2021 Adequan®/USDF Annual Convention (and powered by the work of the DEI Task Force), Tice and her co-presenter, USDF Group Member Organizations Committee Region 3 representative Loretta Lucas of Florida, affirmed that Western dressage is a popular draw in their areas.

In the US, the dressage demographic is overwhelmingly female. But Western dressage has “allowed [CDS] to expand what we can offer to riders—and to men!” Tice says. “We’ve gotten an influx of male riders in the Western dressage.”

The Western-dressage USEF affiliate organization, the Western Dressage Association of America (WDAA), offers special classes for riders with disabilities as part of its Exceptional Rider Program. Riders in the WDAA Physically Challenged division compete using standard WDAA tests. Those in the WDAA Therapeutic Rider division—for riders with “a diagnosed physical, social, or emotional disability”—compete using WDAA Therapeutic Rider tests.

“Our CDS chapter schooling-show series has always offered Exceptional classes: a walk-only test, a lead-line test, a lunge-line test,” says Tice. “We’re finding that that really has opened up a niche. I think if you’re not looking at classes offered at these lower-rated shows, barn shows, you don’t see what’s really offered and what para is getting offered around.”

(For other tips from the “Diversifying Your GMO” convention education session, see “The Best-Laid Plans…”, March/April.) Addressing Financial Barriers to Participation “People are worried about money,” says Ka’awaloa. “That’s probably the hardest part that [the task force has discussed]: How do we help out with no funds to give people, and then the inclusivity part.”

Perhaps taking inspiration from The Rider’s Closet (now part of the Equus Foundation), a charitable organization founded by jumper rider Georgina Bloomberg that provides new and gently used equestrian attire free of charge to riders in need, Tice has proposed a similar “closet” initiative that Ka’awaloa calls “phenomenal.” The objective is “to get people started where they can get some [gently] used clothing and things so that they can go to a show and feel dressed up, but not have to go out and spend $500 to go to their first little show.”

One Step at a Time Ka’awaloa recognizes that the USDF DEI Task Force has a broad and lofty mission, and “that’s why we’re a task force that didn’t go away after a year. We asked for permission to keep going for another year because we want to manage what we started.”

For more information about the USDF DEI Task Force, contact your USDF regional director (see page 2 of this issue) or task-force staff liaison Ross Creech at rcreech@usdf.org.

Penny Hawes is a writer, rider, and coach from Virginia. When she’s not working, you can find her hiking with her daughter, scouting around for antiques with her husband, or hanging out with her assortment of horses, cats, and dogs.