On the final day of the Capital Challenge Horse Show in Upper Marlboro, MD, Lilli Keenan dominated the outdoor ring. Keenan rode Aramis in the younger children’s hunter division and was named champion as well as the overall children’s hunter grand champion.

Aramus has been teamed up with Keenan for one month. She said of gelding, “He’s really, really slow and bouncy, but a lot of fun. He has a big stride and he really jumps.” Capital Challenge was Keenan’s first show with him, but she admitted that he’s really easy to ride. She said, “He’s the same at home as he is in the ring.”
This year is Keenan’s final year in the ponies and she is looking forward to focusing on the children’s hunters for a few months and then on to the juniors.
“It’s nice to be able to go from a pony to a horse,” said Keenan. “It can get a little tricky because they are obviously a different size, but I have had a lot of practice going from the smalls to mediums to larges in one day. Stepping up to the horses is obviously a big step but it is a lot of fun.”
In the WCHR Children’s Hunter Finals Maggie Casper and Wunder Light led going into the second round of the Finals with an 89. She returned and finished with an 87 and an 88 (87.5 average) for a two round score of 176.5. The second place finisher was Coffee Talk and Whitney Downs who had a two-round total of 169.5. Casper also picked up the reserve champion in the older division of the children's hunter and went on to collect the Stewart Warner Style Award.
Casper, of Carmel, IN, loves riding the nine-year-old Belgian warmblood. She said, "He has a really nice natural rhythm.” Casper, 16, will go on to do the NAL Finals in Harrisburg, PA, and Washington DC.
In the junior hunter division Samantha Schaefer and Alise Oken were the riders to beat. Oken was named best junior hunter rider after piloting Take Away to the overall older junior hunters and overall grand junior hunter champion.
Riding Perfectionist ,Schaefer won the younger large junior champion as well as the overall younger champion. She also went on later in the day to win the WCHR Junior Challenge class riding Corvet Z. She said of the Challenge class win, ““We used Chevy in this class because we didn’t want Perfect to be too tired. He had already gotten his high score, so now it was Chevy’s turn.”
The win in the challenge class also gave her enough points to edge out Jennifer Waxman win the WCHR National Championship. She said of the win, “If I were to lose to Jen [Waxman] that’s nothing to be ashamed of. She’s got amazing horses and is a great rider. I went [for the finals] and Chevy was great and I thought, if she wins then she wins.”
In addition to the reserve WCHR National Championship, Waxman also took home the Stewart Warner style award at Capital Challenge.