News

Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College (NEO) graduate and 2017 Equestrian National Champion Brittany Abernathy has been selected to compete in the 2017 American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) Horsemanship Challenge. The Challenge will take place during the Lucas Oil AQHA World Championship Show on November 11-12.  During the competition, sixteen riders from the National Collegiate Equestrian Association (NCEA) and the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) will compete for the title of the best collegiate horsemanship rider in the country.

Abernathy, who earned NEO’s first equestrian national championship last year and is now a junior at Iowa State University, was selected to represent the IHSA, alongside riders from the University of California Davis, The Ohio State University, and Black Hawk College, among others. She will also compete against NCEA riders from Oklahoma State University, Auburn University, and the University of Georgia, among others. “It is such an honor to have the NEO Equestrian program represented at the 2017 AQHA Collegiate Challenge,” said Amanda Burrows, NEO equestrian coach. “This is a head to head competition of the best of the best riders in the country. I am so excited to stand behind one of our own, Brittany Abernathy, as she competes for the 2017 AQHA world title. She is a student who rides for the brand and one of our elite Agriculture graduates.”

The competition will take place over the course of two days, with the preliminaries on November 11 and the final on November 12. For more information about equine sports at NEO, contact Brittany Coffee at Brittany.Coffee@neo.edu.