Changes to the Young Kennel Club 2020 Team GB Squad selection process

The Kennel Club has announced a change to the Young Kennel Club Team GB selection process for the squad in 2020. Following feedback from YKC members to the YKC Coaching Team, it has confirmed a Team GB Try-Out Day will take place during the YKC Training Weekend at Newark Showground on Saturday, 26 October 2019, where the 2020 squad will be selected.

The Try-Out Day will be open to any YKC handler and their dogs competing in Grades 5, 6 or 7 and will consist of one jumping and one agility round under FCI rules and judged on an FCI style course. The judge for the Try-Out Day will be announced in due course.

The top 15 small dogs, 15 medium dogs and 25 intermediate/large dogs will be invited to join the 2020 YKC Team GB Squad to train from November to April, ready for team selection at the 2020 Performance Weekend.  Please note that intermediate dogs are categorised as large according to FCI height measurements and, as such, will be required to try out and compete over the large height FCI equipment.

Competitors can register to enter by visiting http://www.ykc.org.uk/EOJ/ and the closing date for entries is Friday, 21 September, 2019.

Handlers who have represented Agility Team GB at the 2019 Junior European Open (JEO) automatically qualify for the 2020 squad and will not need to enter the Try-Out Day with the dog they ran at the 2019 JEO or any other additional dogs they handled in 2019. At time of writing, the location for the JEO has not been confirmed.

The YKC Agility Team GB Coaching Team would like to apologise for the delay in issuing this qualification process.  Every effort has been made to create a qualification process which meets the complexity of the different ways young handlers are now competing in the sport, e.g. running their own dogs, running parents' dogs, running other people’s dogs, competing in adult classes and competing in YKC classes.