Taylor Walters, Jordan Ruffner, Kimberly Buonomo and Jake Buonomo represented Virginia to take third place out of 14 teams.
Taylor Walters earned an individual 5th place ribbon out of 59 participants. Jordan Ruffner won 7th place in public speaking out of 17 people. Kimberly also competed with the Virginia horse judging team.
These 4-hers will head to Louisville, Ky. on Nov. 2 to compete in Eastern National 4-H Roundup hosted by the North American International Livestock Exposition.
Twelve states other than Virginia competed in the knowledge contest held within the Southern Regional Championship Horse Show. These states included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
The championship event consisted of four different categories of competition: hippology, horse bowl, horse judging and public speaking. In the horse bowl contest the objective is to provide an opportunity for youth enrolled in 4-H horse projects to demonstrate their knowledge of equine-related subject matter in a competitive setting, where attitudes of friendliness and fairness prevail. Horse judging allows youth the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of judging conformation and performance classes of a variety of breeds and disciplines. And the public speaking competition allows youth to use their knowledge and understanding of a specific equine-related topic, and present that topic verbally without the assistance of visual aids.
