Whitley Vann, Lensey Watson, and Ashton Williams started the 2016-17 Ranch Horse Competition season with a bang, all placing at the American Stock Horse Association Region 3 Championship at MSU on Oct. 23. Since its formation in January, the University of Arkansas Ranch Horse Team has already claimed the Reserve National Champion title in April, only three months after the team's official formation.

At the October competition, Vann won the Non-Pro Regional Championship, Watson won the Novice Reserve Regional Championship, and Williams placed third in Novice Reserve Regional. Moreover, Watson and Williams placed second and third, respectively, in their reining classes, and Watson won the Ranch Trail portion of the competition. 

"We had students competing in the Novice division and the Non-Pro division. They all did really, really well," said Daniel Potter, coach of the Ranch Horse Team. Potter competed in the Open while at the event and won the 3- to 5-year-old horse division. 

"There are four divisions," said Potter. "There's 'Open,' which is open to the public. Most are people who have been paid to train horses. The next level is 'Non-Pro.' They have the same level of difficulty as the open riders — they're just in a different group because they're not professionals. Then there's a division called 'Limited Non-Pro.' That's intermediate, if you will. Then there's 'Novice.' They're more of the cattle working division, but they're not necessarily your beginner riders."

Within each division are four separate events. Each event gets more complex as the competition goes on. The goal is to identify the ideal ranch horse — a horse that is able to adapt to any ranching situation.

"There's 'Ranch Pleasure,' which is just 'how nice is your horse to ride from part A of the ranch to part B of the ranch?'" explained Potter. "They have to show their horse at a walk, jog, lope, extended lope, extended trot, and all the transitions in between. Your horse needs to be really good at being able to haul tail somewhere, and then when you get there calm right back down and go to work. Maybe there's a horse that's really good at working the cow, but he's amped up all the time — he's not going to do very well in that class.

"The next event we do is 'Ranch Trail.' It's kind of like an obstacle course. You have to work a gate without getting off of your horse, drag logs, and then there's usually a bridge to go over, a bunch of logs laying out that your horse has to pick its way through — that sort of thing. That's all to simulate the things you'll have to do while you're out working. Lensey Watson's horse is really good at the trail.

"The next event is 'Reining,' which is spins and sliding stops — kind of to show how agile and fancy your horse is. We've got two really good reining horses — one of them Ashton rides, and the other one Lensey rides.

"The fourth event— which is the culmination of it all, and why we do the competition — is 'Cow-Horse.' It takes a good rider and a good horse to keep it all under control." Riders must direct a cow around the arena in a certain format without losing control of the cow or herd.
"We are making a lot of progress with it being only our ninth month as an organization," said Potter. "They've got their eye on winning Division 2 this year. It's really neat. We've got good students and good horses."