FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 18, 2005 Contact: Kristina
Gardner (817) 244-6188 Ext. 121
Open
Scott Amos,
Basalt, Colorado, had watched enough competition to be grateful for his draw.
“I thought
I had a good draw being first up,” said Amos, who rode Wee Little Badger for a
17-point win in the Open Finals. “That’s the lucky hole.”
“He’s
really good-minded,” said Amos. “He’s really quick in the ground and wants to
bend and come around with that nose.”
Amos
purchased Wee Little Badger, trained by Roy Harden, three years ago as a ranch
horse for Abigail Wexner, who shows hunters-jumper in Ohio. The Wexners purchased
a ranch near Carbondale, Colorado several years ago and have recently become
interested in cutting.
James
Wilkins showed Bingos Dually to earn 216.5, as the second rider in the second
bunch, and the Open reserve championship.
“I was
biting my nails,” said Wilkins of the wait for final run. “I know Russ Miller
is such a good showman and Will (Nuttall) has a really nice horse. I knew it
was going to be close.”
Wilkins
rides the 7-year-old Dual Pep son for Brad and Laurie Linaberry, Fairmont, Nebraska.
Brad
Linaberry qualified Bingos Dually for the finals of the $10,000 Novice/Non-Pro
division. Linaberry’s son also shows the horse in $2,000 Limit Rider classes.
“He’s very
durable and has a lot of heart,” said Wilkins. “There have been three different
riders on him and he’s been competitive from the open clear down to the $2,000.
It just shows the type of horse he really is.”
Non-Professional
Barbara
Halligan, Draper, South Dakota, scored 219.5 points on Smokin Manzana to win
the Non-Pro championship; she also placed twelfth on the 21-year-old stallion
in the Open division.
“It was
really fun,” said Halligan. “I found cows that really hooked my horse and it
just fit.”
Barbara
and her husband, Jim, purchased Smokin Manzana, by Smokin Jose, as a 3-year-old
from trainer Joe Heim and have had the horse ever since.
“He’s
brought us from the very starter classes all the way until now,” said Barbara.
“The whole family has showed him. He has a fit if we start loading the trailer
and he realizes he’s not going in. As long as he keeps acting like that, he
gets to go. I just want to have fun with him while he’s still wanting to go.”
Jim
Halligan split eighth and ninth in the $10,000 Novice/Non-Pro riding Manzanas
Tweak, a daughter of Smokin Manzana. The Halligans, who met in college and
raised champion German Wirehair Pointers until they could afford horses, run
cattle on a 3,500-acre ranch in a remote area of South Dakota.
“It’s 20
miles of gravel road to get to our place,” said Barbara. “Our closest show is
about 120 miles away.”
Ronald
Davis, Ennis, Texas, and Wylie Gustafson, Lacrosse, Washington, tied for
Non-Pro reserve champion with 217 points.
“All I
wanted to do was have a clean run,” said country music singer and guitarist
Gustafson. “It was a good bunch of cattle. They all looked at me and my horse
was stopping hard. He’s a hard worker and a real durable horse.”
Ronald
Davis drew late in the same (second) bunch, three horses after Barbara
Halligan’s run.
“He’s a
special horse,” said Davis of his mount Hick Waree. “The only time I ride him
is when I’m going to show him. He’s so dependable and honest, he doesn’t know
the word ‘cheat.’”
Davis, a
cutter since 1991, acquired the gelding in December 2002, after another cutter
told him about the horse. In 2003, Davis won the $20,000 Non-Pro world
championship aboard Hick Waree, and finished in the $50,000 Amateur Top 10 in
2004.
“This is a
humbling sport,” Davis admitted. “But I’m hooked. If a week goes by without a show,
I get nervous and hard to live with. I’ve got to be out there.”
Senior
Youth
Paige
Kincaid, Peoria, Arizona, scored 221 points to win the Senior Youth
championship by a landslide on Dee Acre Doc, a horse she purchased last summer,
after she borrowed the gelding to ride in the NCHA Summer Spectacular Youth
Cutting.
“I was a
little afraid on the second cow because it ran and kicked at my horse,” said
Kincaid. “But he just stayed hooked and we ended up strong.”
Kincaid, a
freshman in the equine division of the Arizona Agri-Business School, won the
go-round with 219 points. This is her third year to qualify for the National
Finals; last year she finished among the top 10 finalists.
Paige
Hadlock, Ogden, Utah, claimed the Junior Youth championship with 217 points on
Classic Acre, a 9-year-old gelding she has been riding for the past year.
“I was a
little nervous because the last time I drew first, a cow ran over me,” she
said. “It was a little scary.”
Paige, 11,
whose father is trainer Lawson Hadlock, has qualified for the National
Championships four times, but this was the first time she has made the finals.
$3,000
Novice Horse
Russ
Miller of Hooper, Utah didn’t mind drawing first to work on Lynx Smartest Doc
in the $3,000 Novice Finals.
“I think
the draw dictated a lot as far as how you were able to get your horse shown,’
said Miller, who won the title with 217 points. “The cattle have been really
tough and I think the earlier draws have been better. So I’ve been fortunate.”
“Being
first out of 30 horses, I never thought that would hold,” said Miller, who
rides Lynx Smartest Doc for Jerry Cronquist of Hooper, Utah. “There were a lot
of good horses in there.”
$10,000
Novice Horse
In the
$10,000 Novice, Nina Get Your Gun and Mike Wood, Scottsdale, Arizona, marked
222.5 points to win the title over Rio CD, who scored 221 under Lawson Hadlock.
“She’s
super athletic and she likes to crouch and get low to the ground with lots of
expression,” said Wood of Nina Get Your Gun, whom he rides for Larry Duvall,
Scottsdale, Arizona.
Wood also
rode the mare to place twelfth in 2004 NCHA $10,000 Novice world championship
standings.
The duo marked the high score of the show to be awarded the deluxe
three-horse slant load trailer compliments of Wayne Hodges Trailer Sales. Duvall will have one-year use of the trailer
for marking the highest score at the show.
“Al
Dunning won the $10,000 Novice last year and I worked for Al for 10 years,”
said Wood. “I wanted to win the $10,000 Novice on this mare because this is her
last year (in that division).
Rio CD,
who worked ninth in the first bunch and won the go-round with 221, was the
high-scoring horse, until Nina Get Your Gun took aim late in the second bunch.
“We cut
three pretty testy cows,” said Hadlock, Ogden, Utah, who rides the 6-year-old
horse for Schuler and Markette, Missoula, Montana. “We cut for shape and they
shaped up really good.”
$2,000
Limit Rider
Ryan Else
of Hamilton, Montana didn’t let his late draw as the next-to-last rider in the
first bunch fluster him in the finals of the $2,000 Limit Rider.
“I was a
little nervous,” admitted Else, “but I just tried to take my time on my cuts,
so I would be clean and in the middle.”
Riding Playboy
Money, Else kept to his task in the center of the working area for a 218-point
winning performance.
Erica
Rubalcaba of Terrebonne, Oregon, rode early in the first bunch, and earned the
reserve championship with 216 points.
Else grew
up on a ranch in eastern Montana and has worked on ranches most of his life. It
wasn’t until last year, however, that he started showing cutting horses.
Currently he works for trainer Mike Wood in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“I started
showing about six months before I went to work for Mike,” Else explained. “I
ride some horses for him and he’s helped me a lot with showing horses.”
Playboy
Money, by Freckles Playboy, belongs to Else’s grandfather, Matt Crawford of
Hamilton, Montana.
$10,000
Amateur
It didn’t
take long for scores to mount in the first bunch of the $10,000 Amateur Finals.
Michael Carlyle led off the set with 211 on Magnalight, followed by Jan Daley
with 214 on Tango Badger. Tyler Weyer upped the ante with 216 on Lenas Spicy N
Hot, but it was the fourth rider, Lola Searle of Vernal, Utah, who set the bar
with 219.5 points; a score that wouldn’t be topped.
“This was
an awesome bunch of cows today and I had a good draw, too,” said Searle, who
also qualified for the $2,000 Limit Rider Finals. “Sometimes I get nervous,
depending on the cows. I had been a little bit short coming to the right here,
but I knew as long as I got him over there, he was going to be just fine.”
Searle
rode Hickory Valentine, a 7-year-old gelded son of Doc’s Hickory, whom she purchased
last year.
“He had
won about $1,200 when I bought him, so we’re both getting seasoned,” said
Searle, who began cutting several years ago at the urging of her husband,
Rhett. “He’s not a very big horse, but he’s got a huge heart. He takes a lot of
loping, but then he gears right down.”
Tyler
Weyer, 17, didn’t need to pick his cattle to earn the reserve champion title,
with a 216-point performance.
“I just
cut whatever stayed up there on top,” said Tyler, a high school senior from
Columbus, Montana, who plans to attend auctioneering school next fall. “My
first cow was real soft; I had a good, easy run on my second cow; and my third
cow was really strong.”
Tyler rode
Lenas Spicy N Hot, who had carried James Hooper as a finalist in the 1992 NCHA
Non-Pro Super Stakes. The 17-year-old gelded son of Doc O’Lena, also carried
Weyer to place among the top ten of the Western Nationals Senior Youth and to
rank among the top ten in the $10,000 Amateur and Senior Youth World
Championship standings in 2004.
$20,000
Non Pro
Wylie
Gustafson can tell you that breaching the herd isn’t necessarily the worst
thing about going first.
“That seat
that I was sitting on got pretty uncomfortable,” said Gustafson, who scored 216
points, as the first rider in the finals of the $20,000 Non-Pro. “That was a
long wait.”
Gustafson,
lead singer and guitarist with the popular Western swing band “Wylie and the
Wild West,” purchased Irish Whiskey Sugar as a yearling for a roping prospect.
The
6-year-old gelding carried Gustafson as British Columbia 5/6-Year-Old Non-Pro
champion last year, as well as a finalist in several other aged events.
“He’s one
of those old-time cow horses,” said Gustafson, who purchased Irish Whiskey
Sugar at John Scott’s production sale in Billings, Montana. “He can do it all.
We use him on roundups, and to rope and sort cattle. He knows his business.”
When he’s
not on the road with his band, Gustafson is at home on his ranch in Lacrosse,
Washington, south of Spokane, with his wife Kimberly, who also cuts. It was
Kimberly who urged Gustafson to train Irish Whiskey Sugar for cutting and to
climb into a cutting saddle himself.
“I was a
truck and trailer driver and turnback helper for years,” said Gustafson, who
preferred roping competition. “But now that I’ve got the cutting bug, I’ve been
putting the roping aside a little bit.”
Amanda
Archuleta, Fort Lupton, Colorado marked 214.5 points on Amanda Boon Four, to
wind up as reserve champion. It was Gustafson’s first NCHA National
Championship win.
Archuleta
isn’t new to Ogden – she was 1999 Western National Junior Youth Champion. But
this is her first time to claim a top slot in a non-pro division. Amanda, 18,
has been showing since she was six, when her father and mother, Joe and Ann,
began competing. It was Joe who purchased Amanda Boon Four and trained her for
his daughter.
$50,000
Amateur
Matthew
Robbins qualified for the $50,000 Amateur Finals on the bubble with 209 points
and came back to win the championship with 218 points.
“My run was
really fun,” said Matthews, who rode Cal Tessa O Lena. “My horse was
outstanding and I really enjoyed it.”
A custom
homebuilder from Lehi, Utah, Robbins, has been cutting for 10 years.
“I like
the whole aspect of cutting,” he noted. “Anyone can do it and you can do it for
so long – into your seventies.”
Kevin
Baumann, Alberta, Canada, also qualified for the Finals on the bubble with 209
points. Riding his 10-year-old stallion Lenas Smart One, Baumann scored 215
points for the reserve championship.
“I was a
little bit worried about the cattle,” said Baumann. “But overall, it worked out
good.”
Baumann,
who recently sold his business in the oilfield waste field, began showing
cutting horses in 1989. He had his first success with Sonitas Miss Royal, a
horse he trained himself.
$10,000
Novice/Non-Pro
Jaime
Slagowski missed her college graduation ceremony in order to compete in the
$10,000 Novice/ Non-Pro go-round. Her sacrifice paid off when she won the
championship with 219 points, aboard Huntress Dual.
“I had to
miss graduation, but it paid off,” said Slagowski, Ogden, Utah, who acquired a
communications degree from Weber State University. “I had a little trouble in
the first round because I didn’t ride aggressively enough, so I was trying to
make up for it in the finals.”
James
Kier, Washington, Kansas, scored 214.5 points to claim the reserve championship
on Bar M Leo Lynx. The money he earned put him over the $200,000 mark in career
earnings.
“I’m
trying to get to the Non-Pro Hall of Fame before I die of old age,” joked Kier,
who has been cutting for 25 years. “I’ve been an NCHA money winner for 25
straight years. That award (NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame) is hard to get, but it’s
worth it. When you get there, you’ve gotten someplace.”
Kier, who
sold his grocery business four years ago, plans to haul Bar M Leo Lynx for the
$10,000 Novice/Non-Pro World championship next year. Kier is a past president of the Kansas Cutting Horse Association
and served as an NCHA director for 10 years.
NCHA is honored to have the support of Wayne
Hodges Trailer Sales and Outlaw Conversions as title sponsors for the
event. Also proud award sponsors were
Murray Leather Goods, Teskey’s Saddle Shop, Gist Silversmiths, KO Trading
Company, and Boehringer-Ingelheim Vetmedica.
The sport of cutting has roots in Western ranching
traditions, where good horses were a necessity for everyday ranch work and
cattle handling. The National Cutting Horse Association was formed in 1946 by a
group of cowboys and ranchers, who wanted to promote cutting competition,
standardize rules and preserve the cutting horses' Western heritage. Today, the
Fort Worth-based NCHA represents over 16,000 people and oversees more than
2,200 NCHA-approved shows with more than $35 million in total prize money
awarded annually. For more information about the NCHA or the sport of cutting,
please call 817-244-6188 or visit www.nchacutting.com.
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