Letter from the President Shane Cline
Hello NPBA!
We are proud and excited to be working with the Pole Bending Community to continue to grow NPBA upon the solid foundation provided to us by the years of hard work that has come before. We are implementing several changes but all have been made with the goal of providing you with a better experience and more opportunities as a pole bender!
Website
Let me start by saying thank you for your patience as we have been working on this new site for you. The site is based off of the functionality of IBRA’s site as far as point calculations etc. so that everyone has one place to go check points, one place to contact about errors etc. We initially were going to copy the IBRA site and just rework it for NPBA but after running into trouble we discovered that after 13 years it was time for a whole new rebuild! Exciting but challenging. The opportunities that this has led to are great. As NBPA members you are now going to have your points tracked and posted all in one central location through this site with advanced search functions to help navigate and track your progress. We are also going to request shows to turn in their payouts with their results so that we can allow you to track your earnings on each horse as well!
Membership
You may notice an increase in the membership price. There are two reasons for this. 1st we will be utilizing a portion of the increase to enable us to have a full time person on staff to handle all the things we have listed above. The NPBA has grown to a point that its members expect and deserve a professionally ran association with staff they can call on. We will also use a portion of those funds to assist in the paybacks and bonus moneys available to you throughout the season and/or at your state finals. If you are a pole bender and a barrel racer please note that there is a discount for NPBA members who also wish to run IBRA.
In closing, I know that we have covered a lot of points here but we are truly working to increase the involvement and improve the experience of our membership. If you have any questions please reach out to us! We want to hear from you. Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you soon!
NPBA Incentive
All stallion and foal nominations must be submitted by April 1st for the 2025 season. For the 2026 season and thereafter they will be due December 1st of the prior year as has been the case in years past. There will be 4 shows for the incentive this year. The Panty Raid April 18th-20th, Kentucky 19 May 3-4, Battle for the Bluegrass June 12-14 and NPBA National Finals Aug. 28-31st.
Show Dollars
From here on the show dollars will be kept and maintained by the home office to ensure proper handling and management. We will work with the directors of each state at seasons end to have awards ordered and distributed in a timely fashion. We want you to have something to show for your efforts and we are confident that with your state directors help we are going to have some awesome awards headed your way!
Rule Changes
The rules as to how points accumulate have been changed to make it fair for everyone whether you ride one horse or ten. Your points will now accumulate on a horse and rider basis. This way if you are only riding one horse you are not at a disadvantage to those running multiple horse. If you are running multiple horse you will be able to accurately asses and track points and earnings for each horse individually.
The point assignment has also been changed to match IBRA’s so if you win a division you will earn 100 points. The most points you can earn in a single season is 1400 points. We only count your best 14 shows. So in order to max out you must have 14 wins in the same division on the same horse. Some folks like to go to big shows others to smaller or more local events. Both have the opportunity to be competitive for year end awards this way. If your state has a state finals those points will not be dropped from your standing they will count above and beyond what was earned in the normal season.
The point season for NPBA will be aligned to match up with IBRA’s. This is so that you will end your season in summer (July 31st) allowing you to have a state finals in decent weather. It will also allow some of our state directors to work together to hold state finals together. The 2026 point season and thereafter will run from Aug. 1-July 31.
We will now approve “Super Shows” and “Preferred Shows.” As you know sometimes it take a little driving to get to a big added money pole bending. If you make the drive you might as well get your points also. Shows that have a specified amount of added money will be deemed Super Shows. This means any state touch the home state that the show is in will automatically be approved for points. The even larger added money shows will be deemed Preferred Shows. That means a member from any NPBA state can go and get points. The goal is to give you another benefit for attending the show and also help to encourage show producers to add more money to the poles by incentivizing NPBA members to come from farther away.
Please read through the rule book to make sure you understand the rules they are relatively simple and short. This is a speed event and we try to let the scoreboard do the talking. NPBA Rule Book
A big thanks to NPBA Home Office and its Members for the opportunity to work with you for another decade.