Cast from disparate backgrounds, the lives of the four 2012 National Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductees, honored at a banquet in Fort Worth last week, are connected by one vital thread – horseback competition.
Sunny Hale grew up in California under the tutelage of her mother Sue Sally Hale, a pioneer who, according to Sports Illustrated, disguised herself as a man to play professional polo in the 1950s and 1960s. At age ten, Sunny began competing in polo tournaments. When she was 19, she turned professional, and at 28 became the first female in the 100-year history of the United States Polo Association selected to play on a US open championship team. Today she is the highest ranked female polo player in the United States.
In 2005, Hale founded the Women’s Championship Tournament Series, and in 2006 she founded the American Polo Horse Association to preserve the pedigrees of US polo horses and to showcase polo’s equine stars.
Barbra Hulling Schulte grew up on a ranch in Smithton, IL, where her father, Cletus Hulling, bought and sold Quarter Horses, many of which were destined to become champions. By the time she graduated from high school, Barbra was an expert horsewoman with championships in many disciplines, but her sights were on a career far from the horse arena. After earning a BS degree in speech, Barbra obtained an MS in speech pathology and audiology and became a teacher at the Arizona State School for the Deaf and the University of Arizona.
In the early 1980s, Barbra took up the reins again, this time as as a professional cutting horse trainer, as well as coach of riders and competitors. She became one of the few women competitors to claim a major National Cutting Horse Association open title, when she won the NCHA Derby in 1988; and she was the first woman to serve as an executive of the NCHA, when she became vice president of the association in 1992. Since then, Barbra has broadened her outreach to include, in addition to training cutting horses, personal performance coaching for riders of all disciplines. She is also in demand worldwide as a clinician and equine consultant, and has authored two books – Cutting, One Run at a Time, and The Gift.
Stacy Glidden Westfall grew up in Maine, where she learned to ride on a Shetland pony, which was later replaced by a Quarter Horse mare. Stacy’s passion for horses took flight when she enrolled at the University of Findlay in Ohio and discovered reining horse competition and met her future husband, Jesse Westfall.
After Stacy and Jesse were married, horse training became their family business and they home schooled their three boys in order to travel to shows. In 2003, Stacy won the National Reining Horse Association freestyle championship while riding bridleless, and followed with many other titles. In 2006, she became the first female trainer to win the annual Road to the Horse colt-starting contest; and that same year, she won the Quarter Horse Congress freestyle reining championship riding bareback and without a bridle, in a stunning performance which she dedicated to her recently deceased father who had “taught her to try new things and dream new dreams.”
As the daughter and main “cowhand” of a West Texas cattleman, Mildred Cotten Farris fit the conventional definition of cowgirl from an early age, but her competitive spirit soon set her apart from her contemporaries. In 1955, she became the Texas Barrel Racing Association’s first champion, the same year she graduated from Alpine College and married champion bareback rider John Farris.
The Farrises traveled the rodeo circuit together for 14 years, during which time Mildred qualified for the National Finals Rodeo 12 times and was runner-up to the world champion in 1959, 1960 and 1969. During the same time she also served the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association as director, vice president and president, and has served as a rodeo secretary for five decades for venues that include the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo; Stiner’s Rodeo; Neal Gay; and the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.