Jaci Hammons closed out her rookie season as the 2026 Texas Circuit year-end breakaway champion, and she capped it by winning Round 4 of the Texas Circuit Finals in Waco, Oct. 13-16, with a 1.9 on a horse she hadn’t touched since July.
The year-end title punches her ticket to the NFR Open in Colorado Springs. It didn’t look that way after three rounds.
“I did not catch a single calf before then,” Hammons said. “I was 0-for-3 going into the fourth round. I had good calves. It just was not lining up for me.”
The Dublin, Texas, cowgirl doesn’t pin it on the setup.
“It’s all mental,” she said. “The calves were good. The start wasn’t tricky or anything. I think I’ve just had a hard summer and have just been trying to get along with my horses again. All of us there, we all know we can rope, but rodeo is such a mental game that sometimes you just get in your own way.”
So for Round 4, she changed something.
“I had switched horses and just kind of had to—didn’t have any other choice but to go for it,” Hammons said. “So got on my old bay horse again and made it work.”
Heineken and Tiger
That bay is Heineken, the gelding who carried her to the San Antonio title in February and through the Texas rodeos and her summer run. By fall, the two weren’t getting along, and she’d parked him.
“He had been turned out since Mandan. I hadn’t touched him,” she said. “Luckily, we kind of got back in our old groove. We figure each other out, and I think we both needed a break, and seems like the break did him good too. So glad to have him back.”
She roped the first three rounds on Tiger, a 5-year-old she got from Brent Lewis—her dad’s cousin—and is still working on buying.
“I needed another horse, and so I went and tried some of his and fell in love with this one,” Hammons said. “Me missing the first three were not his fault at all. He kind of got thrown to the wolves, but he’s been doing great, and so I plan to keep him going.”
A bigger year than planned
Hammons didn’t set out to win the Texas Circuit—or to go on a summer run at all.
“I got my rookie card and was able to go to all the Texas rodeos and just did really good at those,” she said. “Originally, yeah, I was just going to go to some Texas rodeos and make the circuit finals and maybe go out for a couple weeks during the summer. So this year kind of turned into a lot more than I was expecting, which was a good thing.”
Funding a summer on the road was the hurdle.
“I knew it took a lot of money to travel and stay out there during the summer, and I just really didn’t think I was gonna have the funds for it,” she said. “But luckily, I have a very good support system, and my husband pushed me to keep going and allowed me to do all of that, even when it wasn’t going very good.”
Now Colorado Springs is on the calendar.
“I mean, I’m excited,” Hammons said. “That’s a great rodeo and a great opportunity that obviously not everybody gets to enter. So very, very thankful for that opportunity and pretty excited to have that to look forward to.”
