Page 68 - Barrel Stallion Register 2024

Seth and Ashley Schafer Ashley with Joy Wargo and Jolene Montgomery, whom she partnered with Provided by Ashley Schafer for the online barrel-training platform BetweenTheReins.us.
“She has one of the best work ethics of anyone I’ve ever been around.” – Seth Schafer
“I’ve been to a futurity every week for the last four weeks and have another one next week. I’ll be gone all week and then I have one week off until I go to another one. But I’m not overwhelmed; I feel really good. I feel like my colts at home are doing really well. When I’m home, I’ve been able to keep them all ridden and I feel like they’re all progressing nicely, and I’m still able to keep my family time in there by spending the evening with Payson and Seth. I even managed to go to a Bible study yesterday! We are still working on ways to do it better, but I feel like Seth and I are a good team and growing all the time.”
Seth supports her efforts by managing the farm, including breaking colts, riding client horses, roping, shoeing, and taking on all
the other projects and responsibilities that a training facility and a family entail.
From their home base in Comanche, Texas, about 115 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Ashley has parlayed the knowledge and skills she’s gained since childhood to over $1.9 million in earnings, winning multiple Futurity, Derby and 1D Championships along the way. Some of her accomplishments include the Better Barrel Races (BBR) World Finals Open Champion, Barrel Futurities of America (BFA) Open Champion and Pink Buckle Open Champion. Some of
her futurity and derby championships include Diamonds and Dirt, Ruby Buckle, Ardmore, Run At The Rose, Colorado Classic, Triangle Cross, the Hawkeye, the Elite (two times)
and the Kinder Cup and Sand Cup as well as multiple Elite Rodeo Athletes (ERA) rodeo championships. She’s also the Pink Buckle’s leading Incentive Rider.
HER ROAD TO BARREL RACING Ashley and her two sisters, Jennifer and LaDanya, grew up in Lenox, Iowa, on their
parents’—Kathy and Ken’s—family farm. “My mom was the rider in our family,” Ashley says. “She grew up on horses and gave us the bug as well. When we were young, we were horseback pretty much anytime we weren’t at school. I didn’t learn to ride a bike ’til I was 17 because I was always riding horses.
“My mom trained some barrel horses, so we’d compete a little at play days and 4-H shows, but we mostly just rode. Dad had corn and soybean fields, so we’d haul to wherever he and mom were working and ride while they worked. We spent hours riding around those fields, in and out of the trees and ditches while
Roping coach and family
friend Jack Harbin
Provided by Ashley Schafer
they harvested in the fall and planted in the spring. It was a fun childhood.”
When Ashley was 12, her sister Jennifer decided she wanted to do breakaway roping, so Kathy found a calf roper, Jack Harbin, nearby and took the girls for lessons. “We learned how to rope, and we loved it,” Ashley says. “Jack and his wife, Linda, became like family to us.”
Kathy and Ken bought Elton, a 21-year-old rope horse, for Ashley, and Jennifer finished out a 3 year old called Leo. “Leo was one of those horses who was really good at whatever you wanted to do on him,” Ashley says. Jennifer won a lot breakaway ropings on Leo, as did Ashley when they had to retire Elton.
Later, when the girls had gotten busy with school and backed off competing, Leo mostly
hung out in the pasture. “He was special, and I told the kids we needed to either get him into the right hands or I was going to make a barrel horse out of him,” Kathy, now Kathy Leonard- Johnson, says. “So that’s what I did.”
She started legging him up and training him on barrels. “Mom started around April or May, hauling him to amateur rodeos around Iowa,” Ashley says.
“I was just hoping I’d be somewhere in the middle of the pack at the end of the year because there were about 100 barrel racers wherever we competed, but I ended up 17th,” Kathy says. “I was so excited!
“Then Ashley came to us and said she’d like to high school rodeo that fall,” Kathy adds. “I said, ‘Well, here’s your horse, but you have to barrel race, too.’ She said, ‘Mom, I rope,’ and
I said, ‘I know you do but you need to run barrels on this horse, too; this is your ticket. Just go make a run,’ and she did. She was so
66 SPEEDHORSE