Result: A National Championship Almanac for 2025

Post Date: Dec 11, 2024

Submitted By: Stephen "Steeple" Bell

Director of Ames Plantation Matt Backus

Where the winds of change turn out to be a cool, fresh breeze... through a series of board meetings held over this past year, a great number of changes were made regarding the running of this year's National Championship.

The foremost of these is perhaps the changes for the Ames Plantation itself. With the retirement of Dr. Rick Carlisle, a new director has been named. Matt Backus's association with Ames Plantation dates back to 2012; he has been the assistant director for the previous two years and was co-host of the National Championship in 2024. We welcome him to this important role and wish him success.

Changes were also made to the composition of the board of directors for the National Championship Field Trial Association. It may be useful to remind everyone that this board is independent of the Ames Plantation's board of trustees of the Julia Colony Ames Trust. The Ames Plantation Trustees are the hosts for the field trial, making the grounds and buildings available each year; it is the NCFTA that orchestrates the running, determines the qualifications, etc. In the past, the directors of Ames Plantation (Dr. Carlisle and Charlie Frank Bryan before him) have also held president positions in the NCFTA, so we have become used to saying "the folks at Ames" in regard to both entities, but now this distinction will be more evident.

During last February's board meeting, David Williams, Keith Wright, and Joey McAlexander were added as directors. Matt Backus was named to fill the role of secretary/treasurer (the traditional NCFTA board position of the Ames Plantation director). In a July meeting, Dr. Rick Carlisle and Charlie Frank Bryan stepped down and are now Honorary Directors, Jadie Rayfield resigned, and Dr. Stan Wint was named president with Joey McAlexander as vice president. And in a September meeting Tom Shenker and Larry Garner were added to the board, while Bobby McAlexander stepped down to an Honorary Director position due to health reasons.

Also, at that September meeting, your scribe, Stephen "Steeple" Bell, was named the Archivist. A meaningless, non-voting position which I nevertheless intend to exploit without ruth. So when you see me, you need to buy me a cup of coffee because otherwise I will get nothing. Humor aside, I hope to have at least a good start toward making a digital archive of the past American Field trial reports available online in time for the next renewal in February. It will be searchable PDFs; cool, trust me, bro...

One of the first changes made by the new board was the selection process for the judges. Each of the board members was able to nominate potential judges, and a list of those nominated was compiled. This list was then given to each board member to rank their choices. A tally was made, and the top three were selected, with others ranked in order for standbys. The result of this process named three new judges for this year's competition: Richie Robertson, Bill Mason, and Greg Bain. It should also be noted that these judges will be given greater independence and, at their discretion, will make the decisions for weather delays, breakaway times, etc., in order to best see the dogs run rather than run the trial on schedule.

The changes for qualification that were first made public on social media are, of course, foremost on the handlers' and owners' minds. The new qualifications are: Any dog with a first-place finish in any qualifying event in its lifetime is qualified for the 2025 National Championship. Any dog with two placements in any of the qualifying events in its lifetime is qualified for the 2025 National Championship. There is no change to the list of the qualifying trials. These changes are for the 2025 Championship only. The board will re-evaluate the standards at their February board meeting and update them then as they deem necessary. All previous National Champions will be qualified for the life of the dog.

With this change, the doors to the dance hall are wide open now. In the past, the big dance most resembled a country club debutante ball, but now we are looking at a barn dance hoedown. It is difficult to list all of the potentially qualified dogs; a review of the past five year's placements yields a list of approximately 130. But a review of that list finds a great number of those dogs are no longer active on the field trial circuit, either retired or dead.

Your scribe's best guess is that there will be around 60 entries, and that guess was made by looking at the dogs drawn in three trials run approximately at the same time (the Carolina Celebration trials, the Oklahoma Championship trials, and the Mid-South trials at Hell Creek, Mississippi) and seeing which of the dogs drawn in those trials are qualified or half-qualified (needing any placement to qualify). Those numbers are 98 combined entries in the three trials, and of those, 52 are qualified. And your scribe is pulling his hair out over this in preparation of writing the contestant profiles for this year's event, so if your dog is qualified and you intend to run, please send me an e-mail as soon as you decide: steeplebell@icloud.com

If you have read this far into the article looking for the usual history and statistics which I write about, here is a tantalizing tidbit: for the very first time ever, there are German Shorthair Pointers who are qualified; I hope they come. I look forward to the challenge of writing their profiles (and this is a VERY BIG DEAL because, trust me, bro...)

There are further changes for the social functions planned for this year's big dance, which will be announced at a later date. We hope to see you there.

National Championship Judge Greg Bain

National Championship Judge Rich Robertson

National Championship Judge Bill Mason