Havey Riddle and homegrown Mean Girl trumped competition in the NCHA Super Stakes Non-Pro Limited Finals on Friday, with a 220-point win.
Kelsey Weeks claimed the reserve championship with 217 points on GC Counting On Kitty and placed third with 213.5 points on Brittney Rey.
“My mare couldn’t have been any better,” said Riddle of the Cat Ichi daughter who carried her as a non-pro limited finalist at the NCHA Futurity. Mean Girl was also a 2013 Arbuckle Mountain Futurity finalist with her trainer and breeder, Bill Riddle, Havey’s father.
“When you raise the kid and you raise the horse, it’s pretty special,” said Bill Riddle, NCHA Hall of Fame rider and NCHA Members Hall of Fame honoree.
“The last show I won here was the Scholarship Cutting,” said Havey, who also qualified with Mean Girl for the Super Stakes Non-Pro Finals. “Things have changed a lot since then.”
Riddle, 30, won the NCHA Senior Youth Scholarship Cutting in 1999 on Dual Reward and again in 2001, on Stylish And Foxie.
On Sunday, following the Non-Pro Finals, Havey and NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame rider Kyle Manion are bound for the Caribbean, where they will be married on April 27.
Mean Girl is descended from the Riddle family’s equine matriarch Clarks Little Fanny, dam of Cowstruck, producer of 11 NCHA earners of $545,000, including Im Catman, 2010 NCHA Super Stakes Open Gelding and Novice champion.
The wide gap between Kelsey Weeks’ reserve championship score of 217 points on GS Counting On Kitty, by Im Countin Checks, and her third-place mark of 213.5 points aboard Brittney Rey, by TR Dual Rey, reflected the mettle of Friday’s cattle.
“I knew everybody had been having tough luck and I just wanted to be clean,” said Kelsey, 23, who won the 2012 Super Stakes Amateur Classic with Holidayware, as well as the 2011 NCHAÂ Futurity Amateur on One Sweet Sis.
“This mare is so consistent and easy to ride,” said Weeks of GS Counting On Kitty. “She’s super smart and honest, and always right there at a cow’s head.”
Weeks purchased GS Counting On Kitty, trained by Kenny Miller, last July from the mare’s breeder, Gordon Seving.
“I wanted to show her in the small futurities,” Weeks explained. “I did really well on her and so did my trainer, Kathy Daughn.”
GS Counting On Kitty was reserve champion of the 2012 Cotton Stakes Futurity with Daughn, as well as reserve champion of the Brazos Bash Non-Pro Futurity under Weeks.
This past February, Weeks and GS Counting On Kitty won the Tunica Non-Pro Futurity, as well as the Tunica Futurity Non-Pro Ltd, and placed sixth in the Bonanza Non-Pro Futurity in March.