Gold Globe: NC State’s Latisha Sanchez a World Champion in Horse Judging

The final results of the collegiate horse judging contest at the 2025 American Quarter Horse Association World Show in Oklahoma City contained an element of surprise this year. After a 10-hour day ranking 12 classes of horses and giving reasons for her placings in six of them, NC State’s Latisha Sanchez won a coveted AQHA gold globe as High Individual Overall. 

Closing out her collegiate judging career with her first individual win — and as NC State University’s first AQHA World Champion — wasn’t something Sanchez, a senior animal science major, expected. “If I’m being honest, not really,” she says.

Coach Katy Bissinger thought Sanchez had done well but didn’t know she’d finished first among 52 competitors. “I had an inkling that at least she would get her name called, but I didn’t know how everyone else did, of course,” Bissinger says. 

When the final scores were tallied, Sanchez also finished as High Individual in the overall performance division. That, along with consistently high scores on placings and reasons, put her over the top. 

After a moment of surprised silence, Sanchez and her teammates found their voices, erupting in cheers. 

A Career With Horses

Sanchez, who lived abroad growing up, had never been to Oklahoma, Texas or Ohio, where the judging team competed at major shows. She spent seven years in Germany as a child, followed by a year in Italy. 

She started riding in Missouri at the age of 8 or 9 — “later than a lot of people” — when she decided she wanted to work with horses. 

“I thought about being a horse trainer for maybe two minutes, and then I realized it’s expensive and it takes years of work, so I looked into different avenues of working with horses,” she says. “I fell in love with them.”

The family moved to North Carolina during her middle school years, and Sanchez continued riding and working at Brinnwood Farm LLC, a boarding facility in Sanford. Following her graduation from Harnett County Early College in Dunn, she enrolled in the veterinary bioscience option in NC State’s Department of Animal Science in 2023. 

After hearing about the horse judging team as a freshman, Sanchez decided to give it a try. Like all of her teammates, she was familiar with horses, but she had never taken part in judging contests where participants rank classes of horses based on breed standards and performance. The team met for practice twice a week at the Reedy Creek Equine Farm, along with studying the AQHA rules.

At first, it didn’t go smoothly for Sanchez. Naturally reserved, she had to build her confidence and public speaking skills to present her reasons to the judges effectively. “I pretty much wanted to quit the team every semester,” she says with a smile. But she kept going, fueled by her drive to succeed. 

Sanchez and her teammates wanted to be competitive with collegiate judging powerhouses from Texas and Oklahoma, the two U.S. states with the most quarter horses, a versatile breed suited for ranch work, racing, rodeos and pleasure riding. 

“I like to always do well at things, so it was kind of hard for me to not be doing so well compared to those other schools that are more competitive,” Sanchez says.

A month before their final contest in Oklahoma City, the NC State team placed seventh overall and fourth in the performance division at the All American Quarter Horse Congress in Columbus, Ohio.

“Prior to this competition, we had never won a group medal before, so all of us were utterly gobsmacked,” says graduating animal science major Amelia Van Polanen, who had her best contest in Ohio, scoring two medals. “Katy had to encourage us to go up and get our medals because we were all surprised. As we all went up to get our awards, the happy screams and laughs of my teammates have stuck with me.”

For coach Katy Bissinger, it was a chance to share not only knowledge but also a formative experience of her college years, when she was on the Reserve World Champion team at the University of Florida. 

“It was one of the better parts of my undergraduate career and helped shape where I went after college,” says Bissinger, now in her third year as research operations manager for NC State’s Equine Educational Unit. “So I just felt like the students needed that opportunity to travel and to get introduced to the industry like I did.”

Some of the skills developed through judging are specific to the equine industry, but most apply to any career, including analytical thinking, decision-making under pressure, effective public speaking and working on a team, Bissinger says.

Friendships and Futures

During hours of practice, travel and late-night laughter, the teammates got to know each other well.

“I met Latisha in freshman orientation and we have been friends ever since,” says Hilary Burns, who’s graduating this fall with an animal science degree with a veterinary bioscience concentration. “In the spring semester of our freshman year, she [Latisha] mentioned that she had reached out to Katy and asked to join the team. This really appealed to me because I am an out-of-state student and not able to visit my own animals very often. I was missing the opportunity to be around horses, and I felt like this was a way to get more involved and fill that space while I was at school.”

Van Polanen appreciated her team members’ distinctive strengths: Burns as a powerhouse in the hunter field and a support system for the team, Mangum as a caring person and skilled handler of horses, and Sanchez as a “rockstar of a human being” with great character.

“I’ve enjoyed every moment with the team, especially the experiences we’ve shared during our trips,” says Caroline Mangum, who plans to graduate in spring 2026 with an animal science degree with a science concentration. “One of the funniest memories was trying to get Latisha’s trophies through airport security and onto the plane, an adventure none of us will forget.”

Too big to ride in the cabin, the gold globe and horse statuette had to be moved to the cargo hold. The trophies emerged unscathed, fortunately, and without any baggage charges. 

Sanchez, who will graduate in spring 2026, is reconsidering vet school and has developed a strong interest in managing breeding programs. She’s applied for internships in feed sales, equine breeding and cattle reproduction. She recently began leasing a gelding from Brinnwood Farm and hopes to spend more time there.

“Regardless of what I do, I definitely want to end up working in the horse industry,” Sanchez says.

After wrapping up their two years of college eligibility, the team has set a high standard for the next competitors, Bissinger says. 

And no one — in Oklahoma, Ohio, Texas or North Carolina — will be surprised when a future Wolfpack team excels in horse judging.