Mowry and Morgan: A Kiss and Angel Wings Take Cowgirls to Round 8 Winner's Circle

What a round of barrel racing, yet again, with Shelley Morgan and Kassie Mowry coming out on top.

Kassie Mowry and Jarvis / Hillary Maybery for Rodeo On SI

It has been a fairytale week on a less than fairytale year for Kassie Mowry. For those who are not as familiar with the all-time winningest barrel racer, with $7.5 million in lifetime earnings, she has quite a story at this National Finals Rodeo.

Mowry's futurity training program has been a cooperative effort with her fiance, Michael Boone, for many years. The two have worked together to bring colts along in the aged events, where Mowry found incredible success aboard so many different horses. Boone passed away unexpectedly in early June. His dream was for Mowry and "Jarvis" (Force The Goodbye) to return to the NFR, after his amazing performance in the final rounds of the 2023 NFR.

Mowry stuck out the painful and trying year, determined to make Boone's dream a reality. Jarvis seemed to know that they were seeking much more than just a win and carried a broken cowgirl through the most difficult year of her life.

For those of us who follow the aged events, we already knew Jarvis was a unicorn. We have watched him win and win in the futurities and derbies. The rodeo scene was no different - he just never stopped winning. The 2024 NFR has been no exception, literally.

The duo caught the first barrel in the first round, to take the win. That lit a fire under Mowry, who tends to ride pretty quietly. She knew she needed to get a little more aggressive to really show Jarvis' abilities in this tough setup. They placed second in the next two rounds, then won the following four, leading up to tonight, where they tied for her fifth consecutive win.

Mowry has also remarked in interviews that she has used past experience at the NFR to make some shoeing and tuning changes to help Jarvis succeed in this pen.

They split the win with the team who capitalized on drawing the top of the ground, Shelley Morgan and Kiss, at 13.45 seconds. Morgan and Kiss have won the Average in this setup before and they make the same run, every single night. Tonight, Kiss left from way back in the alley and still nailed her first barrel perfectly. You could overlay all of their runs from this week and past NFRs and they would look exactly the same.

Although Morgan has had a little bit more of a challenging week with a few costly tipped barrels, she has snuck in for a couple of checks in earlier rounds. Tonight was certainly her best night of the week and they left $30,155 richer for their efforts.

Emily Beisel and Leslie Smalygo both notched some of their biggest checks of the week tonight. Andrea Busby continues to stay the queen of consistency - earning another round check and holding onto first in the Average by a little over two seconds. She and Latricia Duke are the only two runners clean on eight runs so far, so for the cowgirls with only one down barrel, there is a great opportunity there to still pick up checks.

The World Championship race just continues to heat up. Mowry is the fastest in the Average with a downed barrel and after tonight, she moved into third in that crucial race. She also moved into first in the World Standings at $390,434. Mowry has won $228,151 at the NFR alone. She is in the driver's seat going into these final two rounds and I think it is safe to say, she has the whole rodeo and barrel racing communities backing her.

Round Eight Results

1/2 Shelley Morgan / 13.45 / $30,155.46
1/2 Kassie Mowry / 13.45 / $30,155.46
3 Emily Beisel / 13.47 / $20,103.64
4 Leslie Smalygo / 13.51 / $14,126.88
5 Andrea Busby / 13.59 / $8,693.47
6 Lisa Lockhart / 13.61 / $5,433.42
Halyn Lide / 13.62
Hailey Kinsel / 13.64
Tiany Schuster / 13.68
LaTricia Duke / 13.95
Wenda Johnson / 14.07
Ashley Castleberry / 18.77+
Abby Phillips / 18.79+
Carlee Otero / 19.09+
Dona Kay NT