Ah, the magic and wonderfulness that is the BreyerFest Children & Youth Show.
I waxed poetic about it on Facebook in 2020 when we didn't have an in-person BreyerFest, and I really can't say it any better now, so some of what I've written below comes from that post.
I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to be the Results Guru for the BreyerFest Children & Youth Show since 2016, and let me tell you. I love everything about this show. It is one of my favorite parts of the whole weekend.
Every year on Saturday morning, we volunteers get up before dawn and trek over to the Alltech Arena at KHP. It’s the only time I make my favorite drive between the CHIN and KHP in the semi-dark; the sun is beginning to come up, but it’s not there yet. Once I arrive, my job is pretty easy to set up – plug in laptop, turn on, queue up the spreadsheet, run some last minute tests to make sure it’s working the way I need it to, and done. I then go help with the setup wherever I’m needed. This year, I taped the section champ/reserve sheets to the callback tables.
Once the doors open, I'm at a table, waiting to grab any last-minute entrants and get them a shower number for their tags. There are almost always some kiddos and guardians who don't realize they have to sign up for the show in advance, but there's always plenty of space and they are never turned away. The whole point of the show is to have fun and learn, and the kids took all that time to plan their show strings and do their research, so no one wants to send them home on a technicality. So they go see a show manager to get the Code of Conduct signed and pay their entry fee, then come to me to get a shower number, and they're on their way.
This year, we didn't have any last-minute entrants, so I got to wander around talking to the kids about their models, admiring some of the "custom by entrant" models that the kids had made, and handing out little lucky charm tokens that another thoughtful volunteer brought along.
The kids are so great to watch throughout the day. They're learning, they’re gabbing together, they're jumping up and down with excitement over any color ribbon, they're living in the moment as only kids truly can and having a great time. Section callbacks used to happen as the show went along, but now they're saved for the end so we can all watch and clap for the kiddos. They're just like the adults when they win a prize model - lots of shrieking and flailing.
In addition to having fun watching the kids, I get to nerd out with my awesome Excel spreadsheet all day. Most shows only place to 6th and record only 1sts and 2nds, but the Children & Youth show places every class to 10th plus two Honorable Mentions, and every ribbon is recorded! That means there are over a thousand individual placings between the Children’s show and the Youth show, not to mention some extra Honorable Mention ribbons that the judges can hand out at their discretion if they encounter a really competitive class. That’s over a thousand entrant numbers, entrant names, and horse names to put in, plus the section and overall champs/reserve. It's a ton of data. But it’s Excel, and I love it. I’ve programmed my spreadsheet over the years to work for me, and barring any stupidity my part (like deleting rows and subsequently blowing up my VLOOKUPs), I’m generally able to get everything entered by the time we’re all packed up.
I've gotten my spreadsheet so honed over the years that I actually have time to leave the podium once in awhile to check out the classes. The Scene classes are some of my favorites. This year, one of the kids had a model horse running a bakery, overwhelmed by orders and covered in flour (literally), with kitchen utensils strewn everywhere, and the write-up mentioned a three-tier cake in the oven (which was lit up!) that had been forgotten about in the chaos and was "burnt to a crisp." I laughed out loud when I read it. Another great scene this year was model horses having a "Model Human Show." There were little people figures on one table (complete with documentation!), human performance classes on another table (one was kayaking), boxes of prize models (also humans), and ribbons. These kids are so danged clever and I love seeing what they come up with every year.
Another favorite of mine is the "My Favorite Model" class. The judge always jokes that it's the only time she ever cries when judging a class, and I'm right there with her. Every year, at least one entry write-up has my eyes stinging. This year it was a kid talking about their anxiety and how their model's ears were missing paint because they rub the model's ears to soothe their anxiety. As a person who has been plagued with anxiety since childhood and a former therapist who has worked with a lot of anxious kids on coping skills, that one hit me right in the feels.
There are fun stories in the "My Favorite Model" class, too; one memorable one that tends to get mentioned every year was the kid who put a model on the table and just wrote, "I love this horse because it's black, like my sister's soul."
Because I’m the results person, I also get to see all of the awesome, creative, hilarious names these kids give their models. Every single year there are names that make me say “Oh that’s awesome!” or laugh out loud. Food-related names like Cheese Puff, Sweet Potato, Fish Stick, and Holy Fruit Salad. Straight up funny names like Achoo, Big Fat Honkin Brownie, I’m Especially Teed, Lil Ugly Fella, Mooey Booey (it was a cow), and The Floor Is Lava. My top ones from this year were For Cryin' Out Loud, Elvis Prance-ley, I Did Something Bad, and Sidewalks Saved My Life.
My personal all-time favorite name (which I doubt will ever be topped) was a Prince of Chintz model (the blue Esprit with the flowers on it) with the most appropriate name I've ever seen: Grandma's Wallpaper.
The volunteer model this year was #B-EV-10781 Vegvisir. Georg is a hugely popular sculpt, so there was a collective hobby head explosion when he was revealed as this year's volunteer model back in March at BreyerWest. Two colors were issued there, the sooty buckskin like this guy, and a palomino. The third color was, as I predicted, an even lighter cream, and as I predicted, that's what I received. Another volunteer didn't want the buckskin (especially with his factory flaw, which I'll get to in a minute) and was willing to trade her buckskin, which is the color I liked best, for my light guy.
His factory flaw is ... he has no eyes.
He's supposed to have painted tri-eyes, but most if not all of the ones given out at the Children & Youth show only made it as far as the dark airbrushed shading around the eyes. We had seven or eight of them all lined up on the table and none had painted eyes. The shading is dark enough that it's not all that creepy of a look on him, especially on the left side; it almost looks normal. Breyer immediately offered to take them back to the factory and have the eyes painted, but I didn't want to bother. I'm never going to sell him; I never sell any of my volunteer models. He can just be his cute little weird self on my shelves for the rest of his life. His barn name is Manfred Mann.
That's it for my BreyerFest 2026 adventures and acquisitions! I don't have August planned out yet (which is kind of scary, since August starts on Saturday) but I'm planning to get back to my regular monthly schedule. Thanks for tuning in.
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