Two points separated Sweet Briar College from the top spot in the 28th annual ANRC National Intercollegiate Riding Championship held April 16 and 17 at the College's Rogers Riding Center.

Sweet Briar snared the Affiliated National Riding Commission's reserve championship team title in the national finals with a total of 171.89 points to 173.92 points accumulated by first-place finisher Savannah College of Art and Design. In overall individual competition, SBC's Erin Gibbs '05 claimed third place with a score of 86.9 and Ashland-native Karen Dennehy '05, last year's individual champion, posted 84.21 points for sixth.

Eleven teams traveled to Sweet Briar for the event, coming from as far away as California's Cal Poly Pomona and Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. The University of Virginia edged out last year's champions from Virginia Intermont College to take third place in the overall team competition.

Sweet Briar riding director and ANRC coach Shelby French led her team to top-six finishes in all five phases of team competition and four of five individual contests. The team includes Lauren Wade '05 of Clinton, Miss., and juniors Katherine Parnell of Lynchburg and Jodie Weber of Mount Laurel, N.J.

"I'm ecstatic. My kids couldn't have ridden any better," French said. "Part of it is horseflesh. Sometimes you get beat by better-quality horses." Unlike other collegiate riding competitions, the ANRC judges the horse as well as the rider. The Savannah team has two extraordinary mounts and their riders turned in matching performances, she said.

"How well you perform is the one thing you can control [in competition]. The thing they had control over, they controlled," French said of her team.

Gibbs, a resident of Fairfax, placed first in the individual hunter trials equitation competition, contributing to an SBC team win in that category, along with Weber's fourth-place finish. Gibbs took third in individual dressage sportif competition. The Sweet Briar team ranked third in dressage sportif.

Wade tied for fifth in individual hunter seat equitation, just behind Dennehy's fourth-place score. Sweet Briar captured the No. 3 spot in the team hunter seat equitation competition. The team placed fourth in a written phase that tests riders on riding theory and equine care.

The ANRC National Intercollegiate Riding Championship is a U.S. Equestrian Federation-sanctioned event. Two judges independently score each phase of competition - dressage sportif, an outdoor hunter trials course and USEF Medal-type hunter seat equitation course. Teams lose points for riders who score below 70 percent on the written phase.

Kip Rosenthal of Brewster, N.Y., and Rita Timpanaro of Smithtown, N.Y., judged the event.

For more information, please contact the Sweet Briar Riding Center at (434) 381-6116.