No barrel racer has won as many slot races as Leslie Willis. She reflects on each victory and offers a look into the upper echelon futurity program she’s built together with her husband, Jason Willis, at their Flying W Ranch in Chester, South Carolina.
This article was originally published in the July 2022 issue of Barrel Horse News
Leslie Willis smiled for the win photo at the Barrel Futurities of America World Championships on November 16, 2021, standing proudly behind the $100,000 big check for winning the SuperStakes Slot Race. She received more than a hundred grand for a birthday present, as the win made her the first three-time SuperStakes champion as well as the only person to win five career slot races.
“The slot races suit me, because it’s either my day or it’s not my day, and whoever’s day it is, then I’m happy for them as well,” Leslie said. “It’s been a wonderful blessing five times now.”
The Chester, South Carolina-based trainer was simply made for the kind of one-shot pressure it takes to win a slot race.
“You just go through the gate and give it your all, and it either works or it doesn’t work,” she said. “There’s no trying to play it safe, no trying to just make the pattern, no trying not to hit a barrel. You’ve got to go fast, or you can’t win.”
The former rodeo competitor didn’t start out dreaming of training and running colts. Leslie’s background was primarily rodeoing in the International Professional Rodeo Association and Southern Rodeo Association. After rodeoing on 4-year-old gelding A Special Timeto Fly throughout the 1997 season and then finishing second on him at the Kim Landry Futurity that November, she dove head-on into aged-event competition alongside her now-husband, Jason Willis, who was then a futurity trainer as well. With Jason to help her navigate the futurity world and a few nice colts in training, Leslie never looked back.
“I think every young girl who throws a leg over a barrel horse has a dream of going to the National Finals Rodeo, but Leslie realized with us living on the East Coast that would be rather difficult. And, her horses and her style don’t fit rodeo very well,” Jason said. “Her goals are to have a horse that can go win. She likes to win at every level; whether it be an open show or jackpot or the futurities. Our biggest goal now is focusing on those $100,000 slot races the first of the futurity year. That’s what we look forward to the most.”
Traditional slot races in November and December are for never-been-entered 3-year-olds making their first competitive run to begin the 4-year-old futurity year. Leslie’s four $100,000 slot victories — the three BFA SuperStakes titles and the 2007 Champion of Champions in Memphis — were those types of races. Her $20,000 victory at the Better Barrel Races Slot Race in April 2015 was an additional bigmoney opportunity for that year’s futurity horses.
The thought of going full throttle for $100,000 on a 3-year-old that’s never ran for money is enough to rattle many barrel racers. But Leslie would rather lay it all on the line for one run than try to calculate what it takes to win an average.
“I struggle when I’ve got to go [for an average]. If I’ve done good the first round, and then I’ve got to come back and make that same run again, or even not as good of a run, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Leslie admitted. “I overanalyze it, where in the slot race, I don’t analyze it. You just focus on you and your horse and don’t worry about what everybody else has done.”
High-risk, high-reward situations are a good fit for Leslie’s training style too, Jason says, and over the years she’s fine-tuned the preparation it takes to get one ready.
“Her style puts a horse right on top of a barrel and catches a lot of barrels. The averages have not been as good to her over the years,” Jason said. “The slot races fit her better for two reasons — the pressure doesn’t bother her, and most of the slot races are the first time you’ve got to show the horse. Leslie does such a good job of doing her homework and having that horse prepared by the time we get to the slot race.”
There’s a lot of moving parts to the Willises’ program, and it all starts with picking suitable prospects.
The Right Track
Leslie and Jason Willis have a reputation for selecting fast horses, particularly racehorses. Many of Leslie’s top performers came off the track or from Heritage Place, a sale known for top quality offerings of race-bred Quarter Horses. Of the Willises’ five slot race champions, three were purchased out of the Heritage Place Sale — Bet Or Check in the 2006 Fall Sale, Brookstone Forever in the 2013 Fall Sale and The Midnite Express in the 2019 Winter Mixed Sale. Hesa Dashing Boone and Im Gunnin For Ya both came off the racetrack.
In addition to pedigree, there’s a few criteria the Willises search for when choosing a racehorse for a barrel prospect. It’s not just the speed index Leslie looks at but how consistently the horse is running, as well as its conformation. For example, her 2007 slot race winner Hesa Dashing Boone won a race on the track but only earned a speed index of 82. However, his long-legged build fit the mold of what Leslie likes to ride.
“There’s a certain look we want to a horse, but another thing I do is sit down at the race sales and look at their stats — are they consistent AA horses? Or even consistent single A horses? If they’re consistent, that means something,” Leslie said.
She also won’t snub a horse for inconsistencies on the track if it seems promising enough and checks the rest of their boxes.
“If you’re looking at a racehorse’s past performances and they run AAA a couple times and then fall off the wagon and aren’t performing, you might still buy that horse. That’s showing there may be something broke you’ve got to fix,” Leslie said. “It may be as simple as ulcers. I’ve had to do several surgeries on horses off the track that came back and did well as barrel horses, too. Gimme Damoney (the second highest earning barrel racing offspring of Tres Seis) was one of them. He recovered from a major racetrack injury and it’s never bothered him, knock on wood.”
Jason’s eye for a horse is one of the best in the business and has helped the couple select countless barrel racing winners from racehorse sales.
“He can see things; he sees the way a horse carries itself, watches the way horses walk,” Leslie said. “I personally have to get on its back and get a feel for a horse, but Jason can get a horse out and know how it moves.”
That eye is something Jason’s developed over years of looking at horses. He says what he likes in a horse doesn’t necessarily mean it will or won’t make a winner, but he’s learned through trial and error what suits Leslie’s style and their program. It’s not simply conformation he looks for but how the horse moves across the ground.
“It’s hard to explain, but I can see it, because it just comes natural,” he said. “I can see the hind leg when they step and the motion — some horses walk and they glide across the ground effortlessly. For example, [Sharin Hall’s] Hello Stella — I like her at every gait she’s got, and I like her standing still. You can pick another horse out, and it looks like it requires every muscle in its body just to take a step. People naturally want good conformation, that goes without being said, but you’ve got to watch the animal walk and see how it moves.”
Leslie and Jason continue evaluating prospects once they begin training to avoid spinning their wheels on horses that don’t fit their program.
“I look at the amount of effort she has to put into the horse and the amount of effort the horse has to put into doing it. If she tries for a while and it doesn’t click and we’re fighting an uphill battle, we’ll stop immediately and start with another horse,” Jason said. “There’s red flags before you get to the barrels — horses that have trouble holding leads in the back end, or horses that are lower in the front and move like they’re going downhill.”
While traits like lightness in the front end are a must-have, Leslie has some leeway in the way a horse rides around if it’s athletic and tries to do its job.
“Some horses have better mouths than others; some are real light, some are real heavy, but that doesn’t keep them from winning if you can work around it. If they still want to perform for you, that’s no big deal to me,” Leslie said. “It’s more about the way they carry themselves and if they come to my hand. When I pull that inside rein, if they come to it or don’t come is what helps me or doesn’t help me.”
2007 — Hesa Dashing Boone, Champion of Champions, $100,000 Bet Or Check, BFA SuperStakes, $100,000
Leslie’s first two slot race championships happened in a matter of days on two different gray colts. On December 1, 2007, she ran 3-year old Hesa Dashing Boone (Available To Dash x Miss Burna Boone x Burnell) to a 15.106 to win the $100,000 Champion of Champions Slot Race in Memphis, Tennessee.
A few days later December 4, 2007, her other gray 3-year-old Bet Or Check (Dashin Is Easy x Fabulous Angel (PT) x Raise A Jet (PT)) clocked a 15.66 in Oklahoma City to win the BFA SuperStakes for an additional $100,000. It was a week in her career Leslie has never forgotten.
“They were some of the very first slot races. Those days all kind of run together; it was a blur. It was just amazing,” Leslie recalled. “Those two gray horses were phenomenal. I actually recently watched the two videos, and I didn’t realize both colts rocked their barrels in both of those slot races. I didn’t realize how dangerous I had played it.”
She says both horses were very different but each had talent that presented early in training and exhibitions.
“Those two colts in July [of their 3-year-old years] could run with open horses. After having those two, we always compare all our colts to those two horses,” she said. “I just had the confidence in them. I had run them through the pattern enough to know what they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to do. Both of them I just had O-rings on them with a free head, no tie-downs — I knew what they were going to do.”
2015 — Brookstone Forever, BBR World Finals Slot Race, $20,000
Gray horses must be lucky for Leslie. Her third slot race victory came aboard another gray race-bred speedster the Willises purchased from the Heritage Place Sale. The Better Barrel Races World Finals in Oklahoma City formerly held a slot race in conjunction with the futurity, and in 2015 Leslie claimed the $20,000 title with a 15.802 on then-4-year-old Brookstone Forever (Brookstone Bay x Bit Happens x Feature Mr Jess).
The mare, who cribbed and kicked in the stall, gained almost as much notoriety for winning as she did for her little traveling buddy, a goat named Kinder that helped keep her settled on the road.
“She was the one we hauled a goat around with her. Everybody loved the story of her and the goat!” Leslie said with a laugh. “I didn’t actually get to see it, but the slot race made the TV that year on RFD-TV, too.”
2019 — The Midnite Express, BFA SuperStakes, $100,000
Leslie didn’t roll into the 2019 BFA SuperStakes in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with quite the same confidence she did in 2007. Her slot horse The Midnite Express’ speed made up for everything else, though, and earned Leslie another $100,000 victory with a 15.790.
“He was a little green. I had reached out to [slot owners] Copper Spring Ranch and said let’s try to find another horse, but I couldn’t find another one I thought was good enough to put in a slot race, so we opted for him,” Leslie said. “I just kept striving to get him ready for it. I knew he was fast. I just had to keep it all between the lines and under control. There’s no substitute for speed.”
The Midnite Express (Fly The Red Eye x Dina Blue x Jess Louisiana Blue) was another successful Heritage Place graduate for the Willises. With a speed index of 92, he pulled off the slot victory with a bit of a wild run.
“He was flying. A lot of people don’t know, because in the video you can’t tell, but he left the third barrel and I almost didn’t make it back inside the second barrel,” Leslie said. “He was just so, so fast.”
2021 — Im Gunnin For Ya, BFA SuperStakes, $100,000
The $100,000 SuperStakes victory in 2021 was special for Leslie not just because it made history. Riding again in Copper Spring Ranch’s slot, she posted a thrilling 15.370 on Im Gunnin For Ya, a gelding bred and raised by Copper Spring Ranch by their late stallion Furyofthewind and out of Senorita Seis, a daughter of Tres Seis that the Willises later purchased from Copper Spring.
“I’ve ridden in Copper Spring’s slot for several years, and they raised him, so we were just hoping he would make a smooth run and place and that it would mean a lot to them, since he’s by the late Furyofthewind and they owned his mom,” Leslie said. “That’s why I picked him for that slot. To add icing to the cake, it was the first year they’ve gotten to be there, so they got in the win picture, which made it that much more special.”
The win came as a surprise even to Leslie, who says the gelding had been more of a steady Eddie than a clock-stopper during his 3-year old year.
“I didn’t feel like he would embarrass anybody. I felt like he would go make three turns and a nice pass. He [wasn’t] the fastest kid on the block as far as stopping the clock in exhibitions, but he’d never really done anything wrong,” Leslie said. “Well, that night when I pushed the gas pedal, he took it.”
The Flying W Ranch’s Secret Weapons
The general public sees Leslie’s 15 seconds of $100,000 fame in the arena, but there’s a lot that goes on at home to keep the program running. One of those secret weapons is her husband, Jason Willis. Himself a former futurity trainer, Jason has hung up his training hat but plays a huge role in the success of their program.
“A lot of people don’t realize he was the barrel trainer in the early 90s, and I was running the road with the rodeos. I roped and had a nice barrel horse and piddled with the colts, but it was not my forte. We eventually decided to do this together,” Leslie said. She says Jason’s biggest asset to their program is his eye, be it evaluating prospects or checking for lameness.
“If I feel one seem a little sore, I bring it to the barn to Jason,” Leslie said. “I can send him videos of horses and he can pinpoint that it’s here or there. Most of the time he can get it to one quarter of the horse, like right hind or left front, and then we can seek what’s going on. That’s just something that 20 years of experience has helped us with. A lot of it is being hands-on — I spend 90% of my time at the barn. I know every time a horse takes a bad step, I know every time a horse doesn’t eat.” Jason says it’s that time Leslie puts into the horses every day combined with her own intimate knowledge of each individual that make her a successful horsewoman.
“Just the tenacity that she goes at it with—I see her every day that you guys don’t see. We drove all night to get back from Fort Smith, Arkansas, we hadn’t been to bed and she’s out here messing with her 2-year-olds. She gets up Monday morning, it’s 7 a.m. and she starts with them again,” Jason said. “She never quits. It’s on her mind 24 hours a day, what to do with the yearlings, 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds. It’s not just the few in her hands running that get her attention; there’s 50 horses here and every one of them is on her radar and gets her attention.”
The couple is also quick to credit that it takes more than just the two of them to run a winning training program year after year.
“I have great help. I have a team of vets and a team of people who help me keep these athletes performing at their best. It doesn’t take one vet or one person, it takes a team,” Leslie said.
Proven
Looking back on all she’s accomplished, Leslie says it’s rewarding to reach a level of success where she no longer wonders if she deserves a seat at the table among the futurity industry’s elite.
“The first two [slot races], I was still trying to prove that I belonged in the futurity world. Now, I feel like I don’t have to prove it,” she said. “We all grew up with Troy [Crumrine] winning everything Troy’s won, and we’ve all grown up looking up to different people and the great jockeys. I remember sitting in the stands watching Dale Youree ride, thinking, ‘I hope I can ride like that when I’m his age.’ I laugh, because I don’t ride like that now.”
Decades later with her own style and her own proven program, she isn’t trying to ride like one of the greats anymore— she’s one of them. Leslie’s competitive spirit and desire to win hasn’t gone anywhere. With a place in the barrel racing history books, she says it’s nice to ride down the alleyway with nothing to prove.
“It’s fun to feel like I’ve reached a point where when I do bad, I don’t have people going, ‘Well, she can’t ride.’ It’s just bad luck, and we all have bad luck and bad days, but there’s good days, too,” Leslie said. For Jason, it’s about seeing Leslie’s decades of hard work shine through the horses she trains.
“I enjoy seeing the horses win and her getting rewarded for what she puts into it,” Jason said. “Money comes and goes, but you’ve got to get some satisfaction out of it, because you can get any job and make money. If you don’t enjoy this, then your heart’s just not in it. Everyone says people do it for the money, but we don’t all do it for the money. We do it for the glory of the horses. We enjoy seeing those horses do good. Leslie doesn’t need someone to pat her on the back. She gets her own glory when those horses win, because that’s the fruit of her labor.”
