Ward has eye on big prize

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 | 10 a.m.

Before the fourth round of the 45th Wrangler National Finals Rodeo on Monday, barrel racer Janae Ward got way ahead of herself. Six days ahead, in fact.

The $36,763 that comes with winning the aggregate total of an NFR event might have even been spent before she shot out of a Thomas & Mack Center tunnel aboard her 12-year-old mare DeeDee.

By the end of her event, Ward, a third-generation NFR barrel racer, was thankful just to pocket some cash from a wake-up run that she called "ugly."

"Tonight, it was bad," she said. "Rider malfunction. It was all my fault. I was looking a little too far ahead. I got that $36,000 in my eyes. Everyone has been hitting barrels, and I had to get around them."

At least one other barrel racer isn't shy about purposely hitting any of those three barrels, which come with a 5-second penalty if they tip over. A quick hand, however, acts as a buffer to keep a barrel from tipping upon passing.

Ward, the lone barrel racer to finish among the top three in each of the 10-round NFR's first four performances, isn't into that practice.

"I can't gripe at all, because I still won money," she said of tying for third Monday, which earned her $7,283. "I'll take it and go on. Everyone says and jokes that his is just another rodeo, and it is. But each night is a different rodeo.

"You have to approach it that way. You can't look 10 runs down the road and know what's going to happen. Anything can happen in 10 runs."

Or 43 years. Ward's grandmother, Florence Youree, qualified for her first of five NFRs in 1960. Ward's mother, Renee Youree-Ward, qualified for the 1985 NFR, the first one held at the Thomas & Mack Center.

She's only 21, but Janae Ward is competing in her third consecutive NFR this week. In the first four rounds, she has won approximately $37,000 to boost her career earnings to about $215,000.

After Monday's 14.13-second run, Ward is holding off hard-charging Kelly Kaminski atop the aggregate barrel standings.

Ward owes all of her skills and good fortune to her rodeo family, and the patriarch is a grandfather who began as a calf roper in Oklahoma and then taught his wife, Florence Youree, the tricks of barrel racing.

"He's pretty much the head honcho around there," Janae Ward said. "He's the one everyone gets their information from, and it filters down."

To Janae's mother and father, James, both of whom are involved in training barrel horses, and to her two 15-year-old sisters, who also race horses around barrels.

At Waurika High in Oklahoma, Ward kept the barrel-racing bloodline going in the family with a high school championship in 1999. She was part of a graduating class of 36, so trepidation about attending Oklahoma State was natural.

"I thought, 'Oooooh, Oklahoma State! That's big!' " Ward said. "I thought that this could be a little fish going into a big pond. But they're like good ol' hometown folks. It's just a great school, and I enjoy it a lot."

Ward added a National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association barrel racing title to her resume in 2001, and she's now a senior. On the professional circuit this season, she took first in the barrels at rodeos in Lawton, Okla., and Caldwell, Idaho.

Monday taught Ward that she's still learning, and she planned to return to the classroom this morning at 6. Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association personnel open the Mack arena four times a day to competitors, and Ward vowed to be there early.

She'll calmly walk DeeDee around the three-barrel course two or three times.

"To slow everything back down, to get back to old basics," Ward said. "Get me and her back right. She's an old mare, so she knows what she's doing. Nothing major. Just slow everything back down."

On the matter of speed, and whether her grandmother or mother had the best barrel technique back in the day, Ward wouldn't bite.

"I'm not going to touch that," she said. "I won't touch that."

But which one recorded the fastest time?

"Not," said Ward, smiling, "with a 10-foot pole."