Get to know the next five athletes with a chance at $2 million advancing from the Central Contender Finals in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 17-18: Heidi Gunderson, Samantha Willoughby, Katelyn Scott, Hadlee Landers and Mindy Holloway.
The Central five join the Eastern and Western five in the contender bracket—the only path to the full $2 million potential purse at Globe Life Field. Champion’s-invite riders, including 2025 winnerKassie Mowry, compete in the same field capped at $100,000.
Heidi Gunderson
Qualifying Horse: Wonder If Im Lucky, “Casey”
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Heidi Gunderson is headed to Arlington with the only horse she plans to load—Wonder If Im Lucky, the 5-year-old gelding she calls Casey—after winning the Central Regional Finals in Oklahoma City in 14.970 seconds.
The Lucky Wonder Horse gelding has been one of the most decorated young horses in the sport since his first runs. He swept six futurity titles for owner Shannon Kulseth of Purcell, Oklahoma, took the 2025 BFA Juvenile World Championship and earned 2025 Futurity Horse of the Year. He added the National Western Stock Show in Denver and the Ruby Buckle Central Derby average to the file this spring before the Central Regional title.
For Gunderson, who retired last year from 23 years of teaching to train horses full-time from her northern Minnesota base, the Arlington trip lands on the heels of a stretch she’s described as a calling. A stranger prayed over her in South Dakota a couple of weeks ago.
“You are going into battle, and want you to tell people about your faith,” Gunderson recalled the woman saying. “I truly believe that no matter what we win or what we don’t, He’s the reason I get to do this.”
Practice in Arlington is the next checkpoint. Casey is too spooky to share an arena with rope chutes or other disciplines, Gunderson said, so she’s hoping their slot falls on a barrel-racing-only block.
“I want him to go into that arena and not be scared of anything,” she said. “That’s a huge part of him. So I need to set him up for success.”
Even the trip itself was in question the day of our call. Her rig was in the shop for repairs.
“Plan B goes into effect. If not, plan C,” Gunderson said. “We’ll figure it out.”
And she’s not reaching for nerves.
“My mom was like, ‘Oh, are you nervous?’ I’m not nervous because this is just really exciting that we get to go do this,” she said. “I’ve never rode a horse like him before. He doesn’t owe us a thing. And we’re proud of him.”
Samantha Willoughby
Qualifying Horse: SW The Bayou Bug, “Bug”
Sammie Willoughby is headed to Arlington after winning the Central Regional aggregate and placing third in the Finals aboard SW The Bayou Bug, a 14-hand gelding she calls Bug and pulled off Facebook for the exact price of the horse she’d sold one day before.
The 20-year-old Stephenville, Texas, trainer is the daughter of a former track trainer and outrider and a pony mom. She grew up around race horses and didn’t run her first barrel pattern until the family moved to Stephenville in 2015, starting at play days on her dad’s old outriding horse.
“Neither of us had a clue what we were doing,” Willoughby said.
She rides 30-plus head a day now, from 2-year-olds taking their first saddling to finished horses. Bug doesn’t fit any of those categories cleanly.
“He’s a complete stud without the parts to back it up,” Willoughby said. “He gets what he wants in pretty much every way. He sees grass, he’ll drag you as far as it takes to get it, and let me tell you, for only being 14 hands, he is very strong.”
The Bug story starts with a picture and a phone call. Willoughby had just sold a horse the night before. The Facebook listing had been up two minutes—a face shot, no description. She purchased him quickly to say the least.
“The next morning we went to Tasha Welsh’s and picked him up,” Willoughby said. “It just so happened to be my birthday the next day. Not to mention he was the exact price of the horse I had sold the night before, so to say the stars aligned is an understatement.”
Bug is the only horse making the haul to Arlington. On the Run Witha Gun, Kool Under Pressure and Redwood Manny Gal are coming up behind him in her string, but none of them are at his level yet. Central qualification came through the Dinosaur Classic last-chance qualifier, where Bug won third.
“He’s the most problematic horse I’ve ever met. Anything that could possibly be wrong with him, he has,” Willoughby said. “He has never once wavered or said no to anything I have ever asked, and that’s the exact reason he will get the absolute best out of me in every way.”
If someone Googles her after Arlington, she has one ask.
“You don’t have to have loads of money or start at the top with the fastest horses to end up there,” she said. “If you put in the work, you can achieve just as much, if not more.”
Hadlee Landers
Qualifying Horse: Regally Classic, “Callie”
At 12, Hadlee Landers is the youngest of the five qualifiers headed to Arlington from the Central Regional, advancing aboard Regally Classic, the broodmare-turned-running-mare she calls Callie.
The Lawton, Oklahoma, rider stacked finishes through every level of the Oklahoma City qualifier: second in Round 2 in 15.054 seconds, third in the aggregate in 30.549 and fourth in the Finals in 15.189. Since OKC, she and Callie wrapped the Oklahoma State Champion Barrel Racer title and are headed to Nationals.
The American trip took two horses to set up.
“PJH Fabulous Zero is actually the horse that earned my spot at the OKC qualifier, and then Callie is who ran and secured our spot to The American,” Landers said. “I’m really blessed with some incredible horses that give me their whole heart every time I ask them to.”
Most of Landers’ life looks like a rodeo family in motion. She and her three sisters all compete. They saddle each other’s horses, share the truck and keep score together.
“We win and lose together,” Landers said. “Honestly, it’s our favorite way to spend time together.”
She bought her first pony, Grey Grey, when she was 2. The horses got faster from there. She also plays softball, basketball and runs track, but rodeo is the through line.
Callie is the horse that changed her trajectory. When the Landers family got her, she wasn’t a name. She’d been a broodmare for a few years and nobody really knew what she could do.
“Regally Classic’s barn name is Callie. She’s spicy, sassy, and really only likes me,” Landers said. “She’s definitely the perfect example of a one-person horse. She’s smart enough to know when you’re not doing your job, but she also has the biggest heart and gives me everything she has every single run.”
The program her dad runs leans into one rule: keep it fun.
“My dad always says, ‘If it’s not fun, nobody’s having fun,'” Landers said. “We want our horses happy and confident, and I ride my best when I’m just having fun and trusting them.”
Arlington is the biggest stage she’s set foot on, and she’s heading in trying to keep the same lens.
“Rodeo can humble you really fast, so I try not to get too high or too low and just appreciate every opportunity God gives me,” Landers said. “All my horses and I really love and trust each other. Just getting your feet to touch the dirt at an event this big is already such a blessing.”
Mindy Holloway
Qualifying Horse: Heavens Got Credit, “Cornbread”
Mindy Holloway is headed to Arlington with the horse who carried last year’s American champion through an NFR round win: Heavens Got Credit, the 11-year-old gelding she calls Cornbread.
If Cornbread looks familiar to fans, that’s because he is. Kassie Mowry, the 2025 American champion who returns to Arlington this month on a champion’s invite capped at $100,000, rode him to a Round 6 win at the 2025 NFR after her own Force The Goodbye stayed home. He stopped the clock in 13.42 and added more than $36,000 to Mowry’s NFR run.
This time around, Holloway gets the reins back. As a qualifier, she’s running for the full $2 million.
Her history with the horse runs deeper than five years of ownership. Her husband broke Cornbread as a 2-year-old when the gelding was owned by Edwin Cameron and Tiany Schuster, and Holloway prepared him for futurities his 3-year-old year. She bought him at the start of his 7-year-old year.
Holloway’s day job is full-time realtor in Weatherford, Texas, specializing in horse properties west of the DFW area. The qualifier circuit kept getting wedged between showings.
“I had plans on trying to get qualified again for the American Rodeo. However, every time I would find a qualifier to enter, my plans would get altered with work, usually, or horses,” Holloway said. “I finally got entered in the last chance to qualify in Fort Worth during the Patriot. Cornbread won the qualifier race there.”
OKC took a Hail Mary in the Redemption Round to make it through.
“We hit the first barrel in the first round and had to go through the Redemption Round,” Holloway said. “In that round, we snuck in third with a little ground trouble. And then in the Final Round, we again snuck in last hole. But we made it.”
The horse’s reputation does some of the talking too.
“He has a very Dennis the Menace type personality topped with a very big ego,” Holloway said, laughing. “He can make bad choices sometimes.”
For Holloway, the trip itself is the point.
“I hope they see someone who works hard, stays genuine and competes with gratitude,” she said. “And if they know Cornbread, they’ll probably realize he’s the real star and I’m just lucky enough to be his person.”
Katelyn Scott
Qualifying Horse: Justa DTF Frenchman, “Peanut Seed”
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Katelyn Scott is back at The American Rodeo for the second straight year, qualifying out of the Central Regional aboard Justa DTF Frenchman—the yellow gelding her sister sent her with a name she’s never changed: Peanut Seed.
The Odessa, Texas, rider finished second in the Central Finals in 15.040 seconds to lock up her Arlington trip, third in Round 2 in 15.112 and sixth in the aggregate in 30.659 along the way. It’s the second consecutive American qualification in a 12-month stretch that has also included her 2025 NFR debut, where she landed as the No. 15 cowgirl in the world standings on $130,763 across 95 rodeos.
Scott took a different road into Oklahoma City than the rest of the Central field. Her No. 15 WPRA world standings finish earned her an automatic berth in the Regional Finals, bypassing the open qualifier circuit (Patriot, Dinosaur Classic, Ruby Buckle and the like) that the other Central contenders had to win through. She’s one of just two 2025 NFR qualifiers running through the 2026 American Contender system with a shot at the full $2 million—the other is Tayla Moeykens out of the Western Regional. Both took the harder NFR-pro path through the contender bracket instead of accepting champion’s invites capped at $100,000.
Peanut Seed is the horse who turned the year. Scott’s sister, Lorissa Jo Merritt, shipped the gelding out just before the Fourth of July last year when Scott’s main mount, Streak N Liza, was sidelined at the vet. He was originally futuritied by Crystal McIntyre and later campaigned by Jessica Anderson. He answered the call from the first run.
“I haven’t had him long, but he’s stepped up in ways I didn’t even imagine,” Scott said. “Every horse I’m running right now, my sister has a hand in. She knows what fits me. There are two of them I never even got on before we bought them, and she was right.”
Even the name carries a sermon.
“My sister said, ‘This may not take the faith of a mustard seed—it may be the size of a peanut seed,'” Scott said. “So that’s what we call him. Peanut is his name, but Peanut Seed stuck.”
He’s the horse who vaulted Scott from No. 21 to No. 16 in the WPRA world standings after she won the Caldwell Night Rodeo in August, then helped her stack placings through the late summer and fall to clinch her first NFR.
Scott’s path to Arlington runs through deeper roots than one season. She grew up in West Texas working every event the sport offered—roping, cutting, team roping, poles, goat tying, breakaway. She made the CNFR twice in goat tying and once in breakaway and won pole bending at the Texas High School Finals before college rodeo at Odessa College and Eastern New Mexico University. Her great-aunt, Margaret Owens Montgomery, was the first president of the Girls Rodeo Association, the organization that became today’s WPRA. Her sister-in-law, Halyn Lide, has been to two NFR’s herself, too.
Behind Peanut Seed in her string sits the mare Baby Cakes (Watchthefreakfly), the gelding Streak N Liza (Twiz) and a young backup, Heaven Sent Fame. For Arlington, she’s loading the yellow horse.
For all of it, Scott has the same answer she leaned on through the late-2025 push.
“Every time I show up to these rodeos, whether I’ve been there or not, it feels like the first time,” Scott said. “It’s just new and exciting and so grateful for the horse. We are nothing without them.”