Savannah College of Art and Design (Ga.) managed not one, but two hat tricks at the American National Riding Commission’s 29th annual National Intercollegiate Equitation Championship in Laurinburg, N.C., on April 22-23.

SCAD took home the overall team title for the third time, and senior Jordan Siegel won her third individual championship. St. Andrews Presbyterian College (N.C.) was reserve champion team overall, with third-year student Christina Kalinski finishing as the individual reserve champion by 0.29 points.

Goucher College’s consistent rides earned the Maryland school a close third place.

SCAD and St. Andrews ran neck-and-neck heading into the final phase, the hunter trials equitation, but Savannah junior Hattie Saltonstall hit a rhythm across the wide grass field and posted the day’s highest score, a 90. Saltonstall also posted the high-score of 90 in the morning’s hunter seat equitation phase and finished as individual winner of both phases.

Siegel followed her teammate’s ride with her own 89 on the outside course, making SCAD unbeatable. The Georgia school’s three riders–Siegel, Meredith Gallagher and Saltonstall–finished first, third and fourth overall, respectively.

Siegel’s Bittersweet Win
For Siegel, the double win was bittersweet, signaling the end of her college riding career. According to the Flower Mound, Texas, senior, the ANRC team is “my riding family.”

The three riders are very close.

“It’s always a privilege for us to ride together,” said Saltonstall, of King Ferry, N.Y. “I’m going to miss her.”

Incredibly, both Siegel and St. Andrews’ Kalinski suffered refusals in the dressage sportif ride (Siegel had a stop at the canter fence, and Kalinski at the trot jump), yet were the top two riders in a field of 52.

Siegel regained her focus by “riding our system and our plan,” she said. “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about the ride and the partnership,” she said.

Her partner, Sculpture, was adult amateur hunter, 18-35, circuit champion at the Winter Equestrian Festival in 2005 and reserve in 2006 with Ansley Granger. Siegel rode the 16-year-old Hanoverian to the ANRC individual title last year. All three team horses are former A-circuit champions who were donated to SCAD and are college-owned.

Siegel, also a former IHSA national champion, became the first freshman rider ever to win ANRC Nationals in 2003.

“I’m going to stay amateur for a few years [after graduation] and campaign,” said Siegel. “And help my mom, who is a professional. Eventually, I will go pro.”

Coach Andrew Lustig knew that his riders excelled on the outside course, but he credited their win to the team’s balance. “Each rider has a weaker phase, but we held each other up,” he said.

After the first phase, dressage, St. Andrews led SCAD by less than half a point, with Virginia Intermont a close third. SCAD pulled ahead in the second phase, hunter seat

equitation, when Saltonstall and Gallagher posted the highest-scoring rounds. In the hunter trials equitation that afternoon, Saltonstall and Siegel finished first and second individually, clinching the team title.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been first going into the final phase,” said Lustig, who co-coached SCAD with Ashley Kelly. “I always like being in second place because we can get a little complacent and nervous. So I try to keep it very light and not over-coach them. But I do tell them, ‘never ride for the ribbon; ride the plan.’ “

No “Computerized Riding”
In the National Equitation Championship, riders complete a dressage sportif ride, a hunter trials (outside) course and a hunter seat equitation (medal-type) course while being evaluated on their equitation and performance.

Exhibitors use the same horse in each phase, and jumps do not exceed 3 feet in height. They also sit for a written test on riding theory and horse care. Teams are comprised of three riders, with the top two rides counting toward the team score, and schools can enter up to four additional riders as individuals.

St. Andrews’ new 300-acre equestrian campus beckoned riders with its white fencing, sandy soil and large grassy schooling areas. Everyone praised the facility and their hosts, but the jewel of the event was the sprawling outside course with its long gallops and picturesque jumps.

Kalinski, a third-year student, piloted St. Andrews’ mount Jean Claude to the reserve championship by placing second in the dressage phase and third in the hunter trials.

“In the final phase, my game plan was to ride the rhythm and have fun,” she said. “Jean Claude’s forte is the flat phase [dressage sportif], but he likes the outside course.”

Kalinski, Bethel, Conn., galloped evenly and found the fences easily to score an 88 in that phase.

The inviting hunter trials course featured 11 natural obstacles, including an Aiken, trellis fence, and step-up to a bank. Although the two-stride in-and-out and fence 6, the logs, caused a few refusals, the greatest challenge of the course was the long gallops between each fence. The nearest distance between any two jumps was a whopping 20 strides, requiring horses to be fit and riders to establish a hunting pace and find the jumps out of stride.

Judge Carol Hoffman, Frenchtown, N.J., said, “The three phases are terrific. It gets away from computerized riding; you have to ‘horseback’ more. You can’t do what I call the zombie jumping.”

Hoffman also appreciated the educational component of the written test. “I was reading the study bibliography,” said the U.S. Equestrian Federation R-rated judge. “I think that having [Captain] Littauer and Anne Kursinski as influences is great.”

The 3-foot hunt seat equitation course, designed by Scot Evans, also discouraged “computerized riding” with its numerous single fences and multiple bending lines.

Fence 1, off the diagonal line, was followed by a skinny blue gate off a short turn down the center line, giving riders only three strides to find the fence. The only straight line, fences 9 ABC, came late in the course and tested adjustability with their two-stride spacing. The first element of that line provoked several refusals and some creative reorganizing for riders who jumped in with too much pace.


From Minnesota to Carolina
Three schools competed at ANRC Nationals for the first time: Virginia Tech, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Carleton College (Minn.). Virginia Tech leased horses from the host school, St. Andrews, but Carleton College’s two riders arrived from 1,300 miles away with three horses of their own and spent the week acclimating and schooling.

Carleton senior Lauren Flexon “was the driving force behind this,” said coach Jacquie Cripe, who runs Blue Ribbon Hunters and Jumpers in Shakopee, Minn. “She rode at ANRC Nationals her freshman year at SCAD, so she really wanted to do this her senior year.”

Flexon had another goal: to leave Carleton College with an established riding team. “We started as such a small team,” said Flexon. “At first it was just four girls who were best friends and began a competition team. From there, it just took off.”

Because riding is a club sport at Carleton, the riders had to get innovative to find funding.

Lauren leased Visual Effect (formerly Winsome), a Hanoverian mare from SCAD, in January and took her to Minnesota to train. A private foundation in Savannah, Ga., supplied a grant to enable Flexon to compete. Flexon’s teammate, Dillon Muth, rode a Carleton mount and was self-funded.

“It’s been a real learning experience, and I would like to come back,” said Muth, a sophomore. “It’s just a matter of funding it and making the time commitment.”

Lydia Davies of Goucher College won the event’s sportsmanship award. The ANRC presented two new awards this year as part of the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association Affiliate Awards Program. Whitney Roper, of the University of Virginia, won the ANRC Collegiate Amateur Rider Award. The ANRC Professional Service Award was given to Paul Cronin, of Rectortown, Va., for his contributions to the organization and his personification of the forward riding system.

Cronin’s recent book, Schooling And Riding the Sporthorse: An American Hunter-Jumper System, has updated the system in text for a new generation of riders and students of the horse.