During the
Intercollegiate Horse Show Association Zone 4, Region 2 finals at Sweet Briar College on Friday, Feb. 29, riders and judges paused while SBC’s IHSA head coach Jon Conyers was presented the association’s most distinguished honor.
Before a sizable crowd, including Conyers’ friends, family and colleagues, he accepted the IHSA’s Lifetime Achievement Award from last year’s recipient, Hollins University riding director Nancy Peterson. Flanking Conyers during the ceremony in the Robin S. Cramer arena was Bob Cacchione, executive director and founder of the IHSA.
IHSA head coach Jon Conyers received the IHSA Lifetime Achievement Award.The award is one of the most prestigious in collegiate riding. Past winners select each year’s recipient. “Jon was chosen this year based on his lifetime of service and success in the IHSA,” said Jim Arrigon, a previous winner and IHSA officer.
Conyers, a coach and riding instructor at Sweet Briar since 2003, has been an active director and committee chairman for the IHSA board of directors for more than a decade. He has been an advocate of several affiliated programs, including the IHSA Alumni Association. Recently he has served as chair of the association’s marketing committee, which promotes collegiate riding and the IHSA to the horse industry.
Conyers grew up near Staunton, Va., and began riding when he was 12. He became involved with the collegiate riding association as a student at St. Andrews Presbyterian College when he took a lead role in forming an IHSA team there.
Since that time he has served as director of riding at Wesleyan College in Georgia and at his alma mater, and coached at the University of Virginia and Savannah College of Art and Design. While in Georgia, he also owned a horse show management business. Over the course of his career, he has organized five IHSA national championships.
Last year's recipient of the IHSA Lifetime Achievement Award, Hollins University riding director Nancy Peterson, presents Jon Conyers with the plaque.In 1992, Conyers helped coach a national-champion team at UVa, and throughout his 23-year career, he has coached national-champion riders at St. Andrews, Wesleyan, UVa, Sweet Briar and, as a freelance coach, at the University of Findlay in Ohio.
The IHSA is predicated on the idea that all riders should have the opportunity to show in college competition. Nationwide, about 300 member colleges are divided into zones, which are further divided into regions.
Riders compete in divisions based on their skill levels, allowing beginners to vie for a spot on their college teams. In competition they ride the host school’s horses, eliminating the cost of transportation to shows.
Because riders and mounts are randomly paired, chances of drawing familiar or unfamiliar horses throughout the season are equal for everyone. Riders cannot school their horses beforehand, so no one has a competitive advantage.
Conyers became involved in the IHSA because it offered competitive riding at the collegiate level, but he appreciates the organization’s structure and how it levels the playing field for all riders, he said.
It works especially well for students who have some competitive background but who are beginning riders. “They have that drive,” Conyers said. “The ISHA gives them that opportunity.”
SBC riding director Shelby French prepared remarks to be read during Conyers’ award ceremony. She noted that he didn’t intend to make horses his life’s work two decades ago, a fact he doesn’t dispute. He earned a music degree and planned to go into Christian education and church music, he said.
That was before he took a one-year coaching position at St. Andrews. That year morphed into a distinguished career in collegiate riding, summed up by French’s words at the award presentation:
“For such a young man, Jon’s influence has been amazingly far reaching because of the number of programs, coaches and riders with whom he has had the opportunity to share his passion for horses, quality riding and the IHSA.”
— By
Jennifer McManamay,
SBC staff writer
