10/21/2025
This weekend was NBHA IL State Finals - the Breakthrough Performance Horses Team was there and showed up to work!
To qualify for State, you have to #1 be a member of NBHA and #2 run at three NBHA shows within your chosen district to qualify for state. We had a lot of our crew qualify. Autumn, Sam, Makenna, Izzy, Mikayla and our newest and youngest NBHA member, Charolette; all got their qualifiers in and were able to compete.
Once you get to state, for the open, you have to compete on Friday and Saturday. The goal is to be in the top 10 of a division to qualify you for Sunday. So that means, they only take 80 riders back on Sunday, leaving almost 100 riders with no runs on Sunday. They did offer a redemption race, which is another race and they only take back the winner in each division for the finals. So that took back a total of 84 horses and riders out of 176 total.
The youth, senior and peewee is different. It is just one run, separate from the open, that gives the rider another chance to win money and prizes.
Charolette and Superman got to compete in the peewee class at State and she came in Third out of some tough peewee competition!
Makenna and Hezza Hot Frenchman aka Rascal, had some of their prettiest and fastest runs they have ever had! She was at the bottom of the Youth 2D. And then her second open run they qualified for Sunday finals! On Sunday they had an incredible run but they ended up running .003 of a second too fast to have won the 4D open finals. Literally less than a blink of an eye.
Sam and Painted Naked Lady, aka Peaches got to compete on Thursday and they had the fastest run of our entire group for the weekend. Unfortunately their open runs didn’t go as planned but they still tried their best. They also ran in the Youth and ended up middle of the 2D.
Mikayla and her horse Sully showed up to work this weekend. They laid down some amazing and clean runs. Every run they got faster and faster. Shattering their own personal records each run! Getting faster means moving up a division and it ended up putting her right in the middle were she wasn’t able to qualify. But the way sully was working this weekend and how good he felt was the biggest win of all.
Autumn ran 3 horses this weekend.
RK Shady Lady aka Rosé had some technical difficulties this weekend and just wasn’t feeling 100%. They didn’t qualify for finals in the 2 rounds of the open. But ran the redemption race and won the 4D. So they got to run in the finals. they ended up middle of the 3D in finals.
Im So Izzy aka Izzy had some of the nicest and fastest runs she has ever had. She felt amazing and was listening even better. Neither of Izzy’s open runs qualified for finals but they did run the redemption race and Izzy laid down her prettiest and fastest run of the weekend and ended up winning the 3D in the redemption and qualifying for Sunday finals.
Last but most definitely not least is Superman. Superman felt amazing this weekend. He showed up every day and felt amazing. He’s the horse who owes nothing but still gives everything. He won the 4D on Friday, got second in the 4D on Saturday. That means he qualified for Sunday finals and he ended up fourth in the 4D finals. He won some money this weekend and a pretty new halter.
To say we are proud of how our team did is an understatement. Everyone did so amazing, had incredible sportsmanship and most importantly had fun.
Thank you to NBHA IL for making this possible and we can’t wait to go again.
