United States Eventing Association

This year, Winona Horse Trials in Hanoverton, Ohio, celebrated their 40th year at their spring USEA-recognized event, held May 3-4. While heavy rain threatened cancellation, the event soldiered on, holding dressage on Saturday and enjoying a dry day for show jumping and cross-country on Sunday with just under 100 entries.

Organizer Jackie Smith hosts Winona Horse Trials, as well as several schooling events and shows at Stone Gate Farm and decided to utilize USEA’s ShowConnect software for the 2025 season. ShowConnect is a community-based event management system that serves as a hub for all professionals involved in running both recognized and unrecognized events. The program was launched by the USEA in an effort to provide a user-friendly, cost-effective way to manage events, and it continues to grow year after year as more event supporters utilize it.

Laura Fine has volunteered at Winona for the past few years after moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from the Atlanta area. She makes the 90-minute drive from her home to work as scorer and is proud to work for Smith at Winona and her other unrecognized events throughout the year.

“I've been involved with a lot of events that run at professional, commercial venues and have year-round staff, or seasonal staff. Stone Gate Farm is Jackie's home. She and [her husband Dave Smith] have been running it really their whole lives together. She raised her two boys there,” she said. “She basically has willed this into existence and maintained it for the last 40 years, and it's just an incredible testament at a time where our open spaces and our access and our information for the next generations isn't really there. We can't afford to lose events like that. I love going to an event where it’s running Starter through three-star, and it's going to go for five days. But it's also really great to go to Jackie's where it's her home, and this is being part of your eventing community. Everybody really chips in. I think it's important for people to see that we're all coming together to continue to make it happen.”

One of the biggest appeals of ShowConnect to the Winona team was that it’s fully integrated with the Xentry system on USEA’s website, so all rider information and documents are in one place, and they could have complete entries.

“Jackie decided to go with ShowConnect over the winter, and so we did some training and some calls and some prep to get it going because we were looking for a new system that could integrate a lot more of what needed to happen for registrations and we could also use for the unrecognized series that we run,” Fine explained.

“We were really reducing the amount of time it took for riders to have complete entries and track down their information,” she added. “They still have to do some external things in terms of stall deposits or stall cleaning fees. We tried out a new system this year where if you were an early bird entrant, you got to pick your own stall, which also saves time moving people around, and it puts the onus on people who want to be grouped together or be in certain places to pick your stall. You got your entry complete and in on time—that's your that's your bonus.”

Jackie likes the ability to use ShowConnect for her unrecognized events as well and finds her competitors appreciate its ease of use. She also found that she had fewer incomplete entries this year at the recognized event. “To be able to have [competitors] all use the same entry, scoring and everything—the competitors seem to like that it was real easy for them to navigate to see what they're missing.”

Fine said Coggins and waivers were easy to import, and it was very straightforward to assign times, split divisions however were needed and make adjustments for riders with multiple rides.

From the scoring side, Fine appreciated how easy it was to view an entire division on her screen with start and stop times and every fence on course.

“You may have three or four riders on course, and you're having to change things across multiple riders,” she said. “Other systems don't give you the flexibility to be able to enter that information and have it saved the minute you put it in. We definitely had problems with old systems where, especially if another user logged in and accessed the page that you were scoring from, it could just totally wipe out information somehow.

“ShowConnect performed extremely well in the field,” she continued. “We got really great support from USEA in terms of implementing it. Questions that we had both right before the event when we're getting everything set up and for couple of random things that came up for the live scoring that weren't as clear as we thought they might be—it was easy to resolve.”

Taylor Walton started at Winona as show secretary last year. Her job involves checking necessary documents like Coggins and waiver forms as well as assigning ride times. She appreciated using the “conflicts” feature in ShowConnect where she was able to shift times for multiple rides. She also found it user friendly to print documents like stabling labels and orders of go.

And on show day, everything went smoothly, she said. “There were no errors. Margaret [Marcus, event technology operations manager at USEA] was easily accessible that day if we had any questions. I had her make a video on how to do scoring and everything just to have a guide on how to do it, and that was pretty easy.”

After the event, Fine said she’s looking forward to utilizing ShowConnect for the three Stone Gate Farm mini trials this year.

“We shot a couple of ideas over to Margaret,” said Fine. “I think every system has opportunities to benefit, and I think that's the other thing I liked about ShowConnect is that we know that everybody is really invested in its success and its continued development, and that's a good reason to keep up with a system like that.”

About ShowConnect

ShowConnect has been designed with the future in mind. The system provides the critical features event organizers need to register, schedule, and score an event, but also provides many additional features to all sized events that would not be cost-effective by any other means. It’s designed to allow the flow of information, and in the future, transactions securely in real-time to and from the people and organizations who interact with your event.

ShowConnect facilitates the management of event entries by accepting manual entries and imports from Xentry, the USEA’s online entry system. Additionally, import options into ShowConnect are set to expand, enhancing its flexibility and ease of use.

ShowConnect provides one location with everything needed to run an event, state-of-the-art technology, enhanced scoring systems, real-time updates, easy accessibility, and support for organizers and secretaries when you need it most. Click here to learn more about ShowConnect.