Corporate
Sprawling across 600 acres in Shenendoah Valley for over 30 years The Virginia Horse Center has stayed true to it’s mission—to be a premier equestrian facility servicing horsemen across all disciplines. These days,it’sharderandhardertofindfacilities that are truly about equestrian pursuits, but when you’re working your horse in on of theVHC’s17rings, you’renotridingin spaces designed with horsemen as an “afterthought”.Fromit’sinceptionin1984, the entire complex was envisioned and designedforhorsesandhorsemen.There is always somewhere to take your young horse to lunge, long-line, school or just simply ride out. The fact that VHC continues to exist is something of a miracle and a testament to the determination and passion of horsemen
because The Virginia Horse Center receives NO funding from the state of Virginia and they rely totally on income generated from donations, renting the facilityandfromshowstheVHCputson.
2020 is an exciting time for VHC as many major renovations have recently been completed. Thanks to the amazing fundraising efforts of the Virginia Horse Center Foundation they’ve spent 2.5 million dollars and 100% of these funds were donated For example, Barn “Number One” now as a name thanks to the Sterba Family of Famesgate Stables. Thanksinlargeparttotheirdonation,this barnnowboasts(amongotherupgrades) stall mats, new stall fronts, a new ceiling, new LED lighting, renovated bathrooms andnewpaintinsideandout!
We also have the Sterba
family to thank for a brand new social area, the Jan Sterba Memorial Court, located in the very heart of the complex.Dedicatedbyherfamily to the memory of Jan Sterba, it featuresanamazingsculptureby SantaFeartistSiriHollanderand is framed on each side with benchesandredmaples.Theten
benches in the court—each with a cell charging station—are available for sponsoring! For $2,500youcanhavealovedone, human or equine, memorialized as part of the Virginia Horse Center!Thislittlegemofaspace is already elegant and it will be really glorious when the maples matureandprovideashadyoasis forVHCvisitors.
TheAnderson Coliseum and MooreArena are home to all the performance classes except for Sport Horse, the over fences classes and Dressage.As always, the top trainers in the nation vied for the garlands in Lexington. Well known barns such as RBC Show Horses, Rick Gault Training Center and KiesnerTraining brought some of their most decorated veteran performers.
TheArabian Western Pleasure Open class is a good example. If you check out their list of accomplishments, theTop Five in this class can boast 21 National titles between them, so it’s no wonder that the judges each had a different horse on the top of their card in this class. When the Champion was announced it was Melinda Robert’s PAMcKoy ridden by Rob Bick and Joelle Wrights HoldinAces+/ andTommy Garland called for Reserve.The Arabian Hunter Pleasure division featured some of the consistently larger performance classes inAnderson, with the largest— the Hunter PleasureAATR and the Hunter Pleasure open—both won by GPKazan+/, owned by Lizann Barlett and trained by Charlie Ethier. Nicole Reed from Ghost PinesTraining won the HalfArabian Open and Junior Horse with KS Karnival King and SRC Chespeake Bay respectively. I2
For complete result go to the Region 15 website at http://region15aha.com/ or the Region 15 Association Facebook page.
Region 15 has some of the largest Sport Horse classes of any Region Championship.The large number of entries in the Sport Horse IN Hand demanded a second pair of judges, with Karen Vinsant and Candace Kline joining the Sport Horse judging panel of Carol Bishop, Natalie Lamping and Stella Prescott.The largest Dressage class was theTraining LevelTest 3ATR with 28 entries. Champion in this class was Magicaul Powers+/ with a score of 69.828. Vento WA, owned by Joseph Weller and trained by Brooke Fuches, was Champion in First LevelTest 3 Open and Champion inTraining LevelTestThree Open, in which they received the highest dressage score of the show, 76.034.
PerformanceHalter
The largest In-Hand class in the Anderson Coliseum was theArabian Performance Halter Geldings with 11 very competitive entries. The judges decision for Champion was the seven year old Stival son, Expectations SS owned by Kristine Nolan. Reserve Champion was five year old Montasir AJF sired by MontherAl Nasser and owned by Samantha Hillard. Not only did both of these geldings compete in a performance class at the show (which is required by the division) but they both did VERYwell!
Expectations, trained by JoeAlberti of ChestnuthillArabians, was Reserve Champion in both theArabian Hunter Pleasure Open and theAATR.That AATR class provided a lot of celebrating in the Chestnuthill barn because Champion in the class was Cari Kirchner and Pharaoh CRF and Pharaoh also won the Performance Halter Stallions class with Rob Janecki.
Montasir was Reserve Champion in the Hunter Pleasure Junior Horse with trainerTommy Garland and went two for two with a Reserve Champion in the Hunter PleasureAAOTR 50 & Over with Samantha.
While there were of course no actual spectators, rumor has it that the first ever Region 15 Hippity Hop Challenge was a hotly contested event. Five fierce teams entered and the fees to participate benefited Iron HorseTherapy. Iron Horse entered two enthusiastic teams in the race made up of Sarah Grace Velutini and Katie Knapp teamed up with Kennedy and Kayce Redmond.Tommy Garland also fielded two teams.Tommy Garland teamed with Holly Budic and Erica Reszitnyk and Dana Rossman made upTGTTeam 2. Husband and wife team of Jesse Chase and Lee Cary Chase rounded out the field
Announcer Pam S Barkley made the call and after a clean start, it looked like it was going to be a wire to wire win forTommy GarlandTeam # 1, but after the rider swap which included a thorough sanitizing wipe down of their equipment so that all was politically correct, Lee Cary put on a stunning burst of speed, coming from behind and overtaking Holly to claim the championship garlandAND the prize of a complimentary stall at the 2021 Region 15 Championship show!
But in the end there were many winners! Everyone involved had a GREATtime and supported a great program... Iron Horse Therapy!
Every successful show horse has a first trip around “the show pen” and theAnderson Coliseum was that arena for several horses at this show The Western Pleasure Junior Horse class was won by one of these debutantes as was the Hunter Pleasure Junior Horse. Girl Crush, owned by Laura Gault and Janice Lorick and ridden by Rick Gault was a unanimous choice for Champion in the junior Western and Caralyn Schroter rode PAThe Real Deal to the win in the Hunter Pleasure Junior Horse Championship class for owners David and Rachel Pest.JoeAlberti piloted Party Nut CRF to the Champion victory lap for
ChestnuthillArabians in the HACountry English Pleasure Junior Horse class. Perhaps one of the most impressive youngsters was Dana Rossman’s bay gelding Monello V At only a three year old, he was the youngest of the performance horses and made his debut in a style that promises lots of fun for Dana in the future because in this very first outing he not only tookTommy Garland to a Reserve Championship in theArabian Western Pleasure Junior Horse, Dana wasTop Five with him as well. Says Garland’s trusty assistant Erica R., “You’d never guess that this was his first show ever. Dana won the lottery with this one!”
You could say that Dana Rossman is one lucky gal to have an amazing three year old gelding like Monello V. Or you could say that Monello is one lucky horse to belong to Dana. You’d be dead right either way Alife-long horse girl, Dana had seventeen wonderful years with herArabian mare LlanaAndressa, finally having to say good by to her great mare at the grand age of 34! Being a smart gal, Dana didn’t take make any immediate decisions one way or the other about getting another horse, but it wasn’t very long before she just knew it was time. She had a lot to give to a horse and was missing having one, but was willing to take the time to find the right one. She was leaning towards wanting to get a youngster that she could watch develop, but more important than age or experience, she was willing to wait for the right one. How did she even begin the search? She knew she wanted a western pleasure horse and was very aware of the success of the Varian bred horses so decided to focus on a stallion whose career she’d been following for a whileMonticello V. Say’s Dana, “When I flew to California, there were a couple of prospects waiting for me, but I was immediately drawn to Monello. He was just so personable. It really was love at first sight. He spent the summer with me and in the fall of 2019 I sent him to Tommy Garland for training and I couldn’t be more pleased. Monello is turning out to be exactly what I hoped for.”
This show marked a debut for another new name in Region 15—well sort of. Because while wearing the signature red, white and blue Region 15 championship garlands is not a new experience for Brooke Fuchs, this year marks her first Regional under her own “banner”—Fox Performance Horses and she couldn’t have had a more stellar start. Choosing to base her business at Virginia Godwin and Beth Kelly’s, Oak Creek Farm in North Carolina came with a couple of huge pluses.
Says Brooke, “I’ve worked with Virginia over the years and have a good working relationship with her—she has many years of experience and knowledge I can tap into. Plus, when I worked forTed CarsonArabians I really enjoyed the state of North Carolina so it’s great to be back.”
Among Fox Performance Horse’s accompiishments at Region 15, Veneto WAwho won FIVE Championships, Oh SugarTyme, Champion CountryAATR, H LADYOF NOBILITYH, Champion SHIH Mares Open and Champion SHIH MaresATH and LIZACA, Top 5 HAShow Hack Open, PHANTOM BUGATTI,Top Five Hunter Pleasure Jr Horse and VYVACIOUS BEYTop Five Training Level Open.
Photographers are the illustrators of our life stories and in the case of the Region 15 Championship Show, Jeff Janson Photography and Conklin Photographic areTHE official show photographers. No one works harder than these talented guys so PLEASE SUPPORTthem by visiting their websites and ordering photographs. Someday you’ll be glad you did! In addition providing the behind the scenes shots photographers from the National HorsemanArabian and the Arabian HorseTimes were on hand and you can see the results of their efforts in their Region 15 galleries on Facebook and you can find links to order these as well! Many of the images used throughout are from the camera of Brittany Butterfield with scenics provided by MichaelTroxler. http://www.jeffjanson.com
https://conklinphotographic.com
https://www.troxlermultimedia.com
http://www.brittanybutterworthphotography.com
