Page 66 - BSR 2022

Laser Focus
Jolene Montgomery’s
barrel-futurity training trajectory
has shot to the sport’s upper echelon
by Diane Rice
From an early age, Jolene Stewart Montgomery has known what she wanted to do. Born about an hour’s drive northwest of Columbus in De Graff, Ohio, Jolene was the second of four sisters in a family that later grew to include four step-siblings as well. She cut her equine teeth riding a black- and-white Shetland pony named Bubba.
Her introduction to speed came while trail riding with the family. Bubba’s small size made it difficult for 3-year-old Jolene to keep up, but when her parents suggested she make him trot, she entered a world she hadn’t known before: the world of steed speed.
During Jolene’s childhood, her family spent summers traveling to barrel competitions every weekend. For a few years, she ventured into the hunter-jumper world as well. While in high school and into her early 20s, she broke colts.
After graduating from high school, Jolene attended Ohio State University on a pre- veterinary path, during which time she also galloped horses at Beulah Park in Columbus. But after 10 months, she knew her heart — and her future — laid in training barrel futurity horses. “I didn’t like college at all,” she says. “I really just wanted to be a horse trainer.”
She has done just that. As of 2020, Jolene held the number five spot on EquiStat’s Decade’s Top Riders list with $1,656,364.
RISING THROUGH THE RANKS
Among the horsemen and women who influenced Jolene in her earlier formative years were her parents, Dave Stewart and Lynne Layman; Sharin Hall; Cody Bowserman; and Troy Crumrine. “I worked for Troy on and off for a couple years and he helped me a great deal,” she says.
After a stint working in the cutting-horse field, Jolene signed on at the late Jud Little’s Bar Nothin Ranch in Ardmore, Oklahoma, around 2005. Since then, the Bar Nothin has bred a long succession of horses that made their way to top futurities and the National Finals Rodeo (NFR).
In addition to performance horses, the Bar Nothin — Equi-Stat’s 10-Year Top Breeder as
of 2020 — has also turned out its fair share of top-notch trainers, including Jolene. According to Jud’s son Penn Little in his online tribute to Jolene’s first big barrel futurity winner Sooner Superstar, Jolene “was like the rest of the twenty- something Bar Nothin’ Ranch misfits who somehow became mountain movers.”
According to Penn, prior to being hired, Jolene had sent a VHS tape of herself riding a barrel horse to Jud, who watched it with Bar Nothin’s ranch manager Tim Kusser and barrel trainer Tiffany Fox Case. According to Penn, after seeing the video, Tim said in no uncertain terms, “Hire her.”
“Dad was a competitive guy and he liked to find young people whom he didn’t have to pay a lot, but who wanted to work hard and learn and show they could get things done,” says Penn. “Jolene was all that.”
Penn described Jolene as “hungry and infectiously passionate,” and a trainer who could “out-drink, out-work, and out-optimism the heck out of all of us,” adding that she also recognized the talent of Sooner Superstar, the Bar Nothin’s undersized filly who hadn’t been expected to survive after a difficult birth.
Jud thought the filly was too small, so he put her up for sale early in her training. Two people came and tried her for $5,000 but turned her down. Then, in her 3-year-old year, Jolene
told Jud he may want to consider keeping her. “She caught up and showed how fast and nice she was around February of her 4-year-old year,” Jolene says. That year, the filly gave both Jolene and the Bar Nothin their first premier worldwide event wins: the Barrel Futurities of America (BFA) World Championship as a 4 year old in 2007.
The “little mare that could” returned to
the BFA in 2009, where she took third under Tiffany Fox Case, and then joined Jud’s broodmare band while continuing on the barrel trail in youth and junior rodeo events.
“I didn’t like college at all. I really just wanted to be a horse trainer.” - Jolene Montgomery
64 SPEEDHORSE
Bee Silva