Tryon, N.C. – The Katydid Combined Driving Event at Tryon International Equestrian Center was the host for the 2025 USEF Driving National Championships for Ponies last week, and a total of 10 new national champions emerged from the event.

Advanced Single Pony: Fferm Gwenffrwd Onyx Star with Sarah Reitz

Fferm Gwenffrwd Onyx Star with Sarah Reitz, with trainer Taren Lester ©Mary Phelps 2025

The longtime partnership of Sarah Reitz (Honeoye Falls, N.Y.) and Fferm Gwenffrwd Onyx Star (Hilin Peredur x Cotrell Charmer), her own 2017 Welsh Pony gelding, added another accolade to their resume by earning the top spot in this year’s championship. Scores in the division were close, making for an exciting three phases.

“We’ve been working on dressage a lot over the winter, so I was glad that we were all close in numbers,” said Reitz. “The shoulder in is sort of a new movement in [the CDI3* pony] test, so that’s something we worked on quite a bit. And the canter departures—we’ve worked on being rounder and more supple in the canter work. There’s a lot of canter in that test, so they have to be pretty strong. It’s a fun test.”

Onyx’s Happy Place

The marathon is the strongest phase for “Onyx,” and the pair pulled into the lead after earning the best score of the day in that phase.

“It seems that Onyx’s happy place is running the marathon,” said Reitz. “He put in a good marathon despite the mud, which just made it more fun! We were completely destroyed by the time we got back—completely covered in mud. It was excellent, and it didn’t bother him. He still put in a good performance.”

It Was Close

Reitz and Onyx were far enough ahead that they kept the lead despite having a ball down in the cones phase. Their win on a score of 154.17 gave them a razor-thin margin ahead of reserve champions Amy Cross (Chestertown, Md.) and Wendy O’Brien’s 2010 Welsh Cob gelding, Eulenhof Spencer, who finished with a 154.5.

“It’s a fun group, that whole group that shows in the Advanced Pony. We all get along,” said Reitz. “We all hang out together, so it’s kind of fun. We definitely have pushed each other, because it’s a tight-scoring group, so I’ve worked really hard on my dressage and my cones, and I was glad to get my dressage scores better.”

Eye On the FEI World Championships for Ponies

Reitz has had Onyx since he was a weanling, and over their 18 years together, they’ve earned plenty of top finishes. Reitz hopes to add the FEI World Championships to their record and is working toward making the team this September. Reitz said that if he does get to compete at this year’s world championship, that would most likely lead to a transition in his career.

“When he comes back from pony worlds, I’d probably let him go back to teaching the next generation,” she said. “He was on lease to a junior driver before I started driving him again, so he does a good job of teaching other people, so we’d let him go back to prelim or intermediate. We have a junior driver who drives with us and would like to move up to intermediate, so that’s an option.”