Cassie Morton won the Ruby Buckle East futurity average and the open average on SS I Am Misty, the 4-year-old gray mare she calls Misty, Aug. 20–23 at the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter in Perry, Georgia, for $50,944 in owner money on a horse she and her husband train after work.
Morton won the futurity first round in 14.821 for $8,000, placed fourth in the second round in 14.913 for $3,800 and won the average in 29.734 for $16,000, ahead of Joy Wargo on Chasin Tres Cans (29.831, $11,200) and Elaina McKinney on TJR Let It Rock (29.984, $8,800). The same two runs rolled into the open, where she won the first round for $6,000, placed 1D-9 in the second for $720 and won the average for $12,000; into both Rookie Ruby rounds for $980 apiece; and into the owner/rider, where she won the first round for $2,000 and finished 1D-6 in the second for $464. Ten checks off two runs, with $6,369 to RR Mistakelly and $6,369 to breeder Pamela Smith of Fredericktown, Missouri.
“Biggest thing I’ve ever won,” Morton said.
Normal horse people
The Mortons live in Jackson, Tennessee. Josh Morton is vice president of Delta Contracting, a road construction company, and Cassie works for the state. Their daughter, Macy, is turning 7. Josh rides the horses in the evenings and Cassie runs them, one colt at a time.
“We don’t do this for a living. We start with one horse every year and that’s it. They either make it or they don’t,” Morton said. “We don’t even start with two and pick one and sell one. We literally start with one.”
They were never futurity people. For most of 18 years of marriage Josh ran poles, Cassie ran barrels and the two programs did not mix. That changed in 2023 with a horse they call Frank, who was supposed to be Josh’s pole horse until Cassie took him to Oklahoma City instead. Josh found out he liked training a futurity horse and watching his wife run it more than he liked running poles, and went looking for another one.
JT’s horse
Josh’s brother, JT Morton, bought a yearling colt out of Pam and Wayne Smith’s program and sent him off to be started. Anyone who has run barrels at the Sikeston Jaycee Bootheel Rodeo has run on JT’s work. He was the man on the tractor there, on ground that won the Great Lakes Circuit’s best-footing award twice, and he put on his own barrel races in the same arena.
In January of that colt’s 3-year-old year, JT died unexpectedly.
“My in-laws said they didn’t need this young horse, and so we didn’t have a 3-year-old, so we bought him,” Morton said. “So that’s how it kind of started. He had an emotional attachment, because he was my brother-in-law’s.”
They call him Rocky. He was their second futurity horse and the first thing they owned that was eligible for the Ruby Buckle.
Not mare people
Pam Smith keeps her mares. When she posted a picture of a 2-year-old filly that summer, Morton saw it was Rocky’s full sister and let it go. That September, Josh texted her the same picture.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I saw that. Too bad it’s not a he, because she would sell it.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, she offered her to me,’” Morton recalled. “And I was like, ‘Okay, buy her.’ And he was like, ‘It’s a mare.’ I was like, ‘I know. And we’re not mare people. But really, we’re liking Rocky enough that I would take a gamble on a mare.’”
Josh wanted to go look at her. Then he wanted to ride her.
“I’m like, ‘Josh, she’s 2. What is there to look at? You didn’t like Rocky when you looked at him,’” Morton said. “‘You don’t like anything when it first comes home from the colt breaker anyway. If we hate her, we can always sell her. If she gets hurt, she’s bred well enough, we could breed her. Just buy her and we’ll figure it out.’”
It took a couple of weeks, and Smith waited. SS I Am Misty (RR Mistakelly x MCM Shes Slick x Slick By Design) came home in October of her 2-year-old year with 45 days on her, spent 90 days with Jared Peterson over the winter and was Josh’s project from the end of February on. Morton did not sit on her until an exhibition in July. When Josh handed her the reins that September, he was honest about what he had.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t know whether she’s going to make it or not,’” Morton said. “Here we are.”
The mare answered him in January at the Ashley Brooks Memorial, where she surprised them in the first round and then did it again. Coming into Perry she had hit one barrel all year. Smith bred the cross four times, the Mortons own two of the four, and RR Mistakelly left Perry as the leading sire of the race with $11,406 across nine head.
The 14.8
Morton skipped Guthrie in April because a week away is hard with two jobs and a kid in school, and told Josh she would put up with the heat and go to Perry. Her goal was to place in the average. Top five would be cloud nine.
She drew 36th in the first round and made a point of not listening to any of the times. She knew an eight had won the derby, and that was all.
“I don’t get nervous at stuff like this. I do not know why, but I just don’t,” Morton said. “Partly because she’s just so solid. She’s given me a ton of confidence.”
Josh had told her one thing that week.
“He’s like, ‘Cassie, she’s really turning the second barrel really good. So just be careful,’” Morton said. “Generally, he doesn’t say anything to me about what they’re doing, because he knows I’ll overthink it.”
The mare came into the second hard and Morton picked up her leg, something she had never done on this horse.
“Thankfully, Rocky and Frank have taught me how to do that, because otherwise that barrel would have fallen,” she said.
She ran out, forgot to look at the clock and never heard the announcer say the run took the lead. She heard the number.
“I just got teared up immediately when he said a 14.8, because I knew that regardless of what was winning, a 14.8 was pretty good,” Morton said.
More than 100 horses were left to run, and none of them caught her. By her own spreadsheet, where she has logged every run the mare has made, the run pushed SS I Am Misty past $100,000 in lifetime earnings. Then her phone buzzed.
“He texted me after we ran and he said, ‘I love that mare and I love the jockey,’” Morton said. “And I said, ‘I see where I ranked there.’”
‘You cannot back off of her’
Morton had told Kayla Jones on the EQN Sports Desk that the mare had hit one barrel all year, and figured she had jinxed it.
“I was terrified that I was going to hit a barrel, because I’ve never had an opportunity to win this much money before,” Morton said. “I’d never won $10,000 in one run before to begin with.”
Josh’s text was short.
“He’s like, ‘Cassie, you have to stay aggressive tomorrow. You cannot back off of her,’” she said. “I told myself, this is your chance and you better not back off of her. I was scared, but I didn’t.”
She did not want to know the number she needed, either, and tried to be gone before the announcer could read it to her. He got it out as she turned the third barrel. She never heard it. The mare left the first barrel harder than the day before, got around the second clean, and Morton looked at the clock this time. 14.913.
“I was crying, not because I knew that I had taken the lead, just because she had went back in there and pretty much backed it up,” Morton said. “She was a tenth slower, but you can’t complain about that. She picked a great show to decide to do it.”
Josh’s second text was shorter than the first.
“Today the text came through, ‘I love you,’” she said.
What the money means
“When I look back at our taxes and stuff, before we got Frank, just pole bending or something, me and him together would win $10,000 a year,” Morton said. “The horses were not a profitable thing at all for us.”
Her biggest weekend before Perry took all three of her horses placing three days at the Ashley Brooks Memorial to reach something like $20,000.
“I had told Josh, ‘Just one time, I want to see what would it feel like to win that kind of money,’” Morton said. “I literally can’t fathom it.”
She still hasn’t seen it. Both horses needed the vet after her interview, and by the time she got out at 9:30 p.m. the office was closed.
“Josh was like, ‘I can’t believe you left and didn’t get $30,000 in checks that were ready,’” Morton said. “I was like, ‘Josh, they will mail them to us.’”
Macy has already spent it on an upstairs trailer.
“I’m like, ‘Girl, we didn’t win that much money,’” Morton said. “‘Maybe if we do it a few more times, you can have a ‘loft’ trailer.’”
The stall
Morton thinks she knows why so many people were pulling for her.
“They see that it’s somebody that doesn’t do this for a living. We work full-time jobs, we’re just normal horse people,” she said. “There’s people that this is what they do for a living. They have people that bring them the best-bred horses, and so they’re supposed to win this stuff. We’re not supposed to win this stuff, and I’ve always been okay with that.”
She wants Josh’s name on this, because he rides them. She wants Pam and Wayne Smith’s, who never put the mare up for sale and have had her good runs texted to them all year. She does not take credit for picking them.
“Somebody said to me, ‘You guys know how to pick horses.’ And I said, ‘No, God gave us these horses, because we didn’t pick either one of them,’” Morton said. “I truly believe that they were a blessing from God to us.”
They are—kind of—mare people now. She is working on Josh about pulling an embryo, and losing so far. Asked whether this is still a hobby, she said yes.
She pulled out of Perry at 10:20 p.m. Friday. Josh called, put Macy to bed, called back and talked to her until she was north of Atlanta, and after that she drove the rest of the way home with the radio off.
“It was just like, what just happened?” Morton said. “Because I had literally not gotten to sit down and process it.”
She got home at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, unloaded the horses and walked them down the barn hallway, and at Misty’s stall she stopped. A friend had been there. There were flowers, balloons that said 100,000 plus and a poster board sign that said Ruby Buckle Futurity Champion.
“I just immediately teared up,” Morton said. “She’s just as excited for us as we are.”
For full results, visit rubybuckle.com.