9 - National Cutting Horse Association

FLOWMASTER/NCHA SUPER STAKES
Daily Chatter
D a i l y C h a t t e r s p o n s o r e d b y We s t e r n B l o o d s t o c k
A P R I L 9, 2 0 0 2
AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL CUTTING HORSE ASSOCIATION
King Keeps Cool
208 advances to second round
TODAY’S NEWS
J
eff Chase, who scored 217
yesterday, kicks off today’s
action as the first rider in
the first bunch, on Caltrona.
Hope Justice takes on the
third bunch riding her multiple
champion Freckles Boon Lena.
Justice is up again in the fifth
bunch riding Little Moria Red,
who marked 222 points to win
the first round.
Amy Welch King and Little
Dixie Mac work late in the fourth
bunch, and Dean Sanders, who
tied King with 219 points in
the first round, rides CDs From
Heaven in the sixth bunch.
Sanders is back in the eighth
bunch on All Jazzed Up DS, along
with NCHA Non-Pro Futurity
champion Chad Bushaw riding
Jerryoes.
NCH A Fut u r it y Non-Pro
reserve champion Gail Hamilton
is the last rider in the last bunch,
on JR Smart Smokin.
TODAY’S SCHEDULE
Beginning at 8:00 a.m.
2nd go-round
Super Stakes Non-Pro
TOMORROW’S SCHEDULE
Beginning at 8:00 a.m.
1st go-round
Super Stakes Amateur Classic
134 entries • 9 sets
THURSDAY’S SCHEDULE
Beginning at 8:00 a.m.
1st go-round, cont.
Super Stakes Amateur Classic
15 entries • 1 set
1st go-round
Super Stakes Amateur
125 entries • 9 sets
Amy Welch King and her mare Little Dixie Mac prevailed with
219 points on the final day of Super Stakes Non-Pro first go-round
competition.
A
my Welch King, of Baird,
TX, posted the high score
yesterday to conclude
Super Stakes Non-Pro first goround competition. King’s score
of 219 tied Dean Sanders’ first-day
performance on CDs From Heaven
for the second-highest mark of the
go-round.
Hope Justice won the first
go-round with 222 points marked
Sunday on Little Moria Red.
Justice also rode Freckles Lena
Boon to earn 218 points and tie
for third with Chad Bushaw, Dixie
Purselley, and Linda Mussallem.
King, granddaughter of cutting legend Buster Welch, drew
fifth in the first bunch, riding
Little Dixie Mac. “The first cow
was pretty tough,” noted King.
“It had me right up against the
herd and wouldn’t let me get off.
I had to cut it for what seemed
forever.
“I cut my second cow in the
middle,” she added. “It was a good
cow and I worked it to the buzzer.
I had quite a bit of working time
and my little mare just got better
every turnaround. It was fun.”
King purchased the Quixote
Mac daughter as a yearling at the
McGehee Ranch dispersal during
Western Bloodstock’s Futurity
Sale. “She just had a real cute
Continued on page 2
Today’s second go-round contenders include, left to right: Don Bussey, on Playguns Gin Fizz; Jarred Abney, on Docs Stylish Acre; and
Spunky Hawkins, on Lenas Playote.
Continued from page 1
look about her and I took a gamble,’
said King. “You never really know
(when they are yearlings). She didn’t
have really powerful breeding, but she
certainly has the cowhorse breeding.”
It is the cowhorse in Little Dixie Mac
that came to the fore on Monday. “She
is gritty,” King pointed out. “She is so
tough, she does not want a cow to beat
her. She would take it personally, if she
ever lost a cow. She’s a little mare with
a big heart.”
Little Dixie Mac was trained by
King’s husband, Josh. Amy rode her in
the NCHA Futurity, but flushed a cow
in the first go-round. Her next event was
the Bonanza, where she was a non-pro
finalist.
King, who won the 2001 NCHA
World Championship Non-Pro Finals on
CJ Sugar Lena, in February, qualified for
Saturday’s Super Stakes Classic Non-Pro
Finals on Thorn Doc Whiskey, a Paddys
Irish Whiskey son. King’s father, Ken
Welch, who manages Silverbrook Ranch
in Baird, TX, had purchased the gelding at John Scott’s Production Sale and
planned to make him a ranch mount.
But Josh King, who trained the horse,
thought he would make a nice cutting
prospect, and Amy was able to persuade
her father to sell him to her.
“I told him that if he’d let me buy
him and show him for three years, I’d
sell him back to him for a ranch horse,”
said King, who has earned nearly
$60,000 riding Thorn Doc Whiskey.
One good mama
Jarred Abney, of Maysville, OK, is still
getting mileage out of his first show
horse, a mare he purchased in 1992.
Yesterday, Abney scored 214.5 on Docs
Stylish Acre to qualify for today’s
second round.
Abney’s Super Stakes mount is out
of Stylish Oak Susie, a full sister to Docs
Stylish Oak. When Abney, who works
for an oil company out of Lindsey, OK,
first started cutting, it was Stylish Oak
Susie who carried him to earn $20,000
at weekend cuttings. Later, Abney bred
the mare to SR Instant Choice and got
Susies Star Choice, who has earned
$91,000 for her owner, Alice Walton, of
Mineral Wells, TX. Walton liked Susies
Star Choice so much, she also purchased
her dam. But Abney still has Docs Stylish Acre, by Bob Acre Doc, and a threeyear-old half brother, by Shorty Lena.
You say it’s
your birthday!
These NCHA members
are celebrating their birthday today.
J C Bonine........................Rising Star, TX Abbey Marshall .................. Burleson, TX
Jim Brown............................... Napa, CA Dave Martin ......................... Lincoln, NE
Jack Coe .......................... Lewisville, AR Jeff McCaa ................... Wynnewood, OK
Ruth Cogswell ............... Weatherford, TX Harold Merick Jr............. Bloomfield, MO
Phillip Cooler ......................Clemson, SC Maxwell Neal ....................Springfield, IL
Benjie Christian Neely............. Lyons, GA
Diane Crawford ......................Eyota, MN
Kelsey Peoples ............... Weatherford, TX
Richard Emert .......................... Troy, MO
Harry Roberts ................... Ninnekah, OK
Dwain Felton ........................Artesia, NM
Latham Ryan ................. Weatherford, TX
Wayne Gorko.............................. Canada
Andrew Sligh.................... Hueytown, AL
Roger Greer ........................Santa Fe, NM Nataly Tatone .................... Roseburg, OR
Curt Hawkins .....................Magnolia, TX Lynn Thompson .............. Clemmons, NC
Jill Henderson ............................ Canada Sherry Wallace............................ Canada
William Jouenall................... Transfer, PA Bill Willis ......................... New Bern, NC
Richard Manney .................. Monroe, WA
High marks
for Merritt
By Alan Gold
he baseball season and the Super
Stakes both got underway last
week, and you’ll find one man
who has excelled at both sports in the
judges’ box at Will Rogers Memorial
Coliseum.
Merritt Ranew of Lake City, Florida
played ball for 16 years, including stints
with the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee
Braves. He got his start when a crowd
of major league scouts flocked to his
high school graduation in 1957. The
man from Milwaukee signed him up
for $4,000—the highest bonus allowed
at that time
“That was the most money I’d ever
seen,” Ranew recalled. “You could buy
a new car for $2,500.”
Ranew broke into the big leagues
in 1962 as a catcher with the expansion
team, the Houston Colt .45s. In 1964, he
racked up a .338 batting average and led
the National League with 17 pinch hits.
“The major league ballplayers, like
Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Hank
Aaron and Ted Williams, were idols of
mine,” he said. “I got a chance to play
with them and play against them. It was
just a boyhood dream.
“To play in Yankee Stadium for the
first time was just a dream come true
—it’s a different atmosphere altogether
when you first walk down on that
field.”
The first time his parents saw him
play in the majors, Ranew hit a home
run in Yankee Stadium.
Ranew grew up in the country in
Georgia. During baseball’s off season, his
older brother introduced him to cutting.
“I’d go to some of the shows,” he
recalled. “One day, he let me ride one of
his horses, and I got the bug. I got interested in it and started practicing.”
In 1970, his team was at spring
training in Tempe, Arizona, and Ranew
would visit ranches in the area after
the day’s workout. That’s where he met
Buster Welch one afternoon. Welch
invited him to go along to a cutting.
Ranew got along well with his manager, Hall of Famer Bob Lemmon.
“So I thought I’d give it a whirl,”
he said. “I told him, ‘Bob, yesterday, I
T
Trainer Joey King is temporarily out of the
saddle with a fractured pelvis.
Four-legged
Trainer Joey King, of Haleyville, AL,
watched from the sidelines yesterday
as Don Bussey, of Guin, AL, qualified
Playguns Gin Fizz for the second goround of non-pro competition. King
trained Bussey’s Playgun daughter,
but was grounded by a kick three days
before the Super Stakes. With three
hairline cracks, it will be at least six
weeks before King is back in the saddle.
Meanwhile, Scott Brewer stepped in to
work Playguns Gin Fizz.
“She’s had her plans changed a little
bit,” said Bussey, who has been an amateur finalist and a non-pro semi-finalist
in Fort Worth.
King, 38, got his start in rodeo, but
switched to cutting when a colt purchased for roping showed an affinity for
cow work. A local cutting horse trainer
advised King to “keep a cow in front of
him and don’t let him go to the cow.”
The colt, Surely Royal, went on to win
top AQHA Junior honors in Alabama
and qualified for the World Show, as
well.
“If I had eight hours
to chop down a tree,
I’d spend six hours
sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln
NCHA judge and former
ballplayer, Merritt Ranew
met the Babe Ruth of the cutting horse
business and he invited me to go down
to Tucson and watch them cut next
weekend. Would there be any chance
that I could go?’
“It really surprised me, but he told
me, ‘okay, I’ll let you off Saturday and
Sunday, but you just keep it quiet.’
“I went down and Buster and John
Carter, Matlock Rose, Stanley Bush—all
the great trainers were showing. I was
really excited, like I was watching my
first major league ballgame.”
Ranew has been equally adept at
knowing when a curve ball or a cow is
about to break.
“That ball moves a lot faster than
that cow,” he laughed, “but it’s the same
principle.
“You travel a lot to different places.
You have a lot of great competition. You
meet a lot of great people. So basically,
it’s the same type sport, just a different
scenario.
“In baseball, you watch all the
better ballplayers play, and you learn
from them,” Ranew pointed out. “So I
learned by watching all the good cutters. I just kind of emulated them.
“When I finished playing baseball,
I used to dream about playing baseball
every night for a long, long time. Seems
like the more I got into cutting, and the
more I showed and trained and all that,
it kind of got me away from it.
“I think it was a good thing that I
could get into something else that was
similar to what I’d done all my life. It’s
worked out great for me. The Lord’s
really blessed me.” ★
Cartoonist Jerry McAdams, “that cow
art guy,” is publisher of the Hico News
Review and a nationally recognized artist
whose favorite subjects are horses and
cattle.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is
the host of the John Deere/NCHA World
Finals. Houston is the home of the largest
Livestock Show and Rodeo in the World, held
each February. So plan to visit Houston and
take in the World Finals.
Home of the John Deere/NCHA World
Championship Finals.
Putting you in the second-best seat in the
house! For ticket info call: 1-713-791-9000.
Get your Cinch jeans and shirts
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across the country.
For the retailer nearest you, call:
1-888-882-4624.
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Ben Emison • Milt Bradford • Jim Ware
The winning caption for yesterday’s
Mystery Photo is:
“I just LOVE this new trampoline!”
submitted by Barbara Crumpler
Runner-up:
“Sire: Mexican Jumping Bean
Dam: The Flying Wallendas
Proof that breeding matters”
submitted by Pamela Kay Reeder
Nobody guessed that the horse is
Walter M, owned by Jerry Windham,
whose brother was the late Fort Worth
Police Chief, Thomas Windham.
Identify these three men (seated) and win a special prize. Submit your answer in writing to Carolyn
Crist in the show office. The winner will be named in tomorrow’s Daily Chatter.
Barbara Crumpler wins a copy of
Matlock Rose, The Horseman.