Congratulations to Carla Wennburg and the IHSA Western team for placing second at this weekend’s semi finals hosted at SAPC and advancing to the National Championships, May 6 – 9 in Lexington, KY. Boy did we have a big weekend! Two full days of competition, a Pig Pickin Saturday evening and a nail biting finish placing us closely behind the current National Champions from the University of Findlay.
We also had three individuals advance to the National Championship, Kelsey Moody in both Open Horsemanship and Reining, Shannon Leggett in Novice Horsemanship and Megan Stiles in Intermediate Horsemanship. The complete results are posted on the SAPC Equestrian website.
The semi finals are held in three locations on the same weekend (the other two being in NY and CA). We had 100 riders from 22 schools competing for the opportunity to advance to Nationals. The show ran smoothly, our horses were wonderful, the students worked long hours to prepare the facility and the horses. (Two mornings with 6:00 a.m. or earlier starts makes for a long weekend!) NCSU, NC A & T, VA Tech, Jessica Rhymer Paige, and several other individuals loaned us a total of 18 horses – thank you all for your generosity with your horses. The individual classes were big with 14 riders in each class. Each rider performed a pattern as well as rail work and so these classes lasted a good hour. The team classes were smaller with one rider from each of the seven qualifying colleges representing their school.
The SAPC Equestrian team and staff really pulled together to put on a first class show. All the western team worked incredibly long hours to prepare the horses and the hunt seat and dressage teams rose to the occasion to help with clean up and horse holding. This weekend was a great example of the teamwork and peer support that SAPC is known for. As Carla likes to say, “It takes a village…”
Last big event at the Equestrian Center this semester is IDA Nationals, April 24 – 25.
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