Naomi Beaton won her first WCJR on a horse she’d only started training for goats a few months earlier. Drew Ellen Stewart built such a cushion in the semifinals that getting beat in the short round couldn’t cost her the title. Beaton took the youth crown; Stewart took the junior.
Youth Division: Beaton Wins It on the Backup
Naomi Beaton, 13, of Lovelady, Texas, came up through the Last Chance Qualifiers on her first-ever trip to the WCJR.
She clinched her spot in the Rounf 1 of the LCQ, then made a bold call for the second. “I actually rode my backup horse for the second round because I knew I had nothing to lose,” Beaton said. That horse, Chief, is a barrel horse she’d only converted to goat tying the previous October.
Beaton rode Chief the rest of the way, running a 6.50 in the semi-finals—her fastest time of the week—and following with a 6.74 in the finals for a two-run aggregate of 13.24, good for $2,970 and the world title.
“I whipped my horse, which I don’t usually do,” she said of the semifinal run. “I was kind of just going for it, and he ended up running way faster than I was expecting. I just knew I had to get off and run pretty fast to my goat—I drew one of the good goats out of the draw, one I’d actually drawn in the first round of the Last Chance Qualifier, so I kind of knew what he did. I just ran to him and laid a good tie on him. I don’t really remember much of what was happening. Everything kind of felt like a rush.”
She liked the setup.
“I like that we ran in the track arena,” she said. “It’s got a really good alleyway. I like running in track arenas because it makes your horse not want to fade as much.”
Staying sharp on the road comes down to a familiar training partner, her goat. Beaton travels with a live goat and practices on it daily, warming up with a run and a stretch before every trip down the arena. She’s been tying goats since she was 7, and goat tying was her only event at this year’s WCJR.
Junior Division: Stewart’s Cushion Holds
Drew Ellen Stewart, 17, of Normangee, Texas, was seeded straight onto the leaderboard—no Last Chance Qualifiers necessary.
“That’s a great deal,” she said of going straight to the semi-finals.
She doubled up all week, also entering the pole bending and the breakaway roping.
Her semifinal run, a 6.15, was the fastest goat-tying time of the week—until Kameryn White ran a 6.01 in the finals to beat her outright in that round. But Stewart’s cushion held: her 6.38 in the finals was good for fourth, and the two-run aggregate, 12.53, was still the best in the division for $4,811 and the world title.
She rode her own mare for the win.
“I tie off my good mare,” Stewart said. “She won the AQHA Horse of the Year at State, so she’s been doing me really good.”
“The goats have been pretty good all week,” she said, “and especially in the semis and the finals, they were really good.”
