The Zane Schulte Trainer of the Year Award has been established in honor of Zane Schulte’s memory. After our precious son made his transition to a heavenly life in June of 2000, Tom and Barbra Schulte decided to honor his memory by creating an annual award for professional trainers in the cutting industry. The spirit of the award is to honor a trainer who serves the industry through leadership, integrity, service or any combination thereof. It is a humanitarian award. It is not about arena earnings and the trainer does not have to be a high profile one, although he or she might be.

Zane Schulte exemplified a spirit of inspiration just by being who he was. In his memory we want to acknowledge a professional who demonstrates that training horses is truly about serving people. If you are interested in nominating someone, I encourage you to do so. You will find details in the Chatter.

The presentation of the award (a specially designed Jan Mapes sculpture) has spawned a wonderful free social event to be held December 8th during the Futurity. The party will be sponsored by professional trainers. We have come together as a group to give back to the amateurs, non-pros, breeders and NCHA members who support us! In addition to Zane’s Trainer of the Year Award being given during the party, this year’s Hall of Fame inductees will be justly honored as well. Within the party there will be a silent auction to raise money for an NCHA charity. Plans for this are being finalized. It’s a win/win for everyone involved. So many trainers are enthusiastic about having a positive reason to join together. These ideas evolved like a snowball through the efforts of many people including Lindy Burch and others who have been involved in a similar event on the Pacific Coast.

Tom and Barbra Schulte, in partnership with the NCHA, are conducting a raffle to raise money to establish the endowment fund to insure that funds to purchase the Jan Mapes sculpture annually will always be available.

First prize in the raffle is a fully loaded, leather interior, sports utility, Chevy Trailblazer valued at $32,000.00. Second prize is the ONLY Zane Schulte Trainer of the Year sculpture that will ever be available to anyone who did not win the actual award. (I personally think that is very exciting!!) And, third prize is a custom made Roo-Hide saddle valued at $2,500.00.

There will only be 1,000 raffle tickets sold, so your chances of winning are terrific!!!! Each ticket is $100.00. The drawing will be held on October 1st, so if you are interested, request a raffle ticket request form soon by sending an email to info@barbraschulte.com or by calling Barbra Schulte’s office at 979-277-9344. You can also visit www.barbraschulte.com where you will find the ticket request form.