Virginia Region Members at 2007 Festival

Here is some of the news from Kentucky. I know there are many lively stories to be told, so please send me those because this is mostly the facts.

The outstanding members of the Virginia Region Championship teams looked awesome marching in the Opening Ceremony of 2007 Festival. There is a video of the parade of teams on the USPC website, so take a look.

We are back from the Kentucky Horse Park where we had many successes and outstanding experiences. 55 members from the Virginia Region traveled to KY; 15 of those were competing for the 3 days in Quiz.

One big surprise was to find some of our missing banners in KY – guess where they have been for the last year….

Below are some of the results. Many score sheets are now posted on the USPC website so you can see individual scores.

Show Jumping Team #1 was 3rd overall (Bronze medal) out of 18 teams, and 6th in Horse Management: Rachael Livermore, Kevne Hull, Haley Bance, Retsy Holliday, and Samantha Sweitzer as the non-riding Stable Manager (SM).

The SJ competition included 5 rounds plus a Jump-Off if clean in the 5th round. One round was also scored on equitation and another was a "Take Your Own Line" course.

Show Jumping Team #2 was 4th in Horse Management: Katherine Houston, Ashley Larsen, Laura Roberts, and Bridgette as SM. (They had a 4th rider from Illinois.)

We sent a team in all 3 divisions -- Training (15 teams), Novice (21 teams), and Beginner Novice (19 teams).

Our Training team won the Gold: Megan Behm, Christie McKitrick and Eric Jacquay as the non-riding Stable Manager. They had a 3rd rider from Florida. They had a mounted awards ceremony and a Victory Gallop at the Rolex tower on the cross-country course.

Our Novice team won 2nd (Silver Medal) overall and 2nd in Horse Management: Melissa Fox, Ann Bellinger, Jaclyn Buseck, Colleen McKitrick and SM was Sarah Aloumouati.

Our Beginner Novice team was 4th in Horse Management out of 19 teams: Hannah Forte, Caroline Quanbeck, Katherine Briggs with Stephanie Sweitzer, SM.

Senior Games team was 9th out of 18 teams and in a 7-way tie for 1st in HM; breaking the tie put them tied for 4th place in HM.

Junior Games team was 14th out of 19 teams.

In Tetrathlon (run, swim, shoot, & ride a jumping course) Senior Boys Reed Dove was first, and his brother Jenkins was third after all phases. Reed was first in the shooting phase and Jenkins was first in the swim phase. They were also 1st and second in Horse Management.

Our First Level Dressage team was 4th out of 9 teams: Lauren Marfurt, Adriane Alvord, Rachel Fanta, Amber Kunkel, with William Baker as SM. These riders each rode 4 tests plus a musical freestyle.

We had one other First Level Dressage rider, Alison Bensinger, who competed on a scramble team that placed FIRST in Horse Management and 6th overall.

Skye Hebert was our only Training Level Dressage rider. She had some great dressage scores, the highest on her team for 3 of the rides, so she really helped her scramble team: 66.296, 62.8, 67.037, 60.104, especially since it was a 3-man team.

We had 15 Virginia members in Quiz: 4 in Jr D, 4 in Sr D, 4 in Jr C and 3 in Sr C.

The Junior Cs team was 3rd (another Bronze) out of 8 teams: Brandi Robertson, Bennett Camp-Crowder, Brooke Hatcher, Christine Pankow.

Senior Cs team was 5th out of 10 teams: Torey Lockwood, Haley Loving, Moriah Orms, and scramble member Catherine Stack (from California).

Torey also qualified individually for the “long list” for the North American Quiz Championships in Edmonton, Alberta in October.

Some of the competitors came from Alaska, Washington (a 5 day trip with horses), Maine and nearly all other States.

In addition to these competitions there was an International Inter-Pacific Exchange with teams from the U.S., Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. These teams borrowed local horses for a "Nation's Cup" jumping competition. One member of the U.S team was our Virginia Region member, Tori Long.

The International Mounted Games competition was held on the final night before a packed coliseum. Teams from the UK, Australia, Canada and the US rode ponies borrowed from the USPC Championships competitors. The United States team placed first.