Get to know barrel racer Kelsey Howard, and how she’s leveraging opportunities with the Women’s Rodeo Championship to expand her opportunities within a limited schedule.
Kelsey Howard has a lot going on.
She runs her own business, Flatrock Chiropractic, where she treats both humans and horses. She’s a wife to steer wrestler Chance Howard, who currently sits sixth in the PRCA world standings. She’s a mom to 6-year-old Luke, who plays baseball. And she has several horses in various stages of training and seasoning.
Howard also happens to be fifth on the Women’s Rodeo World Championship (WRWC) Challenger leaderboard in barrel racing, with her position nearly locked in for the $802,000 world’s richest women’s rodeo, set for May 12–14 and May 17, 2025, at the Fort Worth Stockyards. The event is a collaboration between the World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA) and the Professional Bull Riders (PBR), who will host the WRWC Championship Round during the PBR World Finals at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
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So how does Howard manage it all?
“I’m a very organized person,” Howard said with a laugh. “My husband, not so much. He’s a procrastinator. But he’s good at calming me down when I get a little wound up.”
“It all works out,” she said.
Family is central for Howard, who said she’s more comfortable bragging on her husband’s rodeo achievements than her own.
“I’m really proud of him,” Howard said. “He’s worked hard to get back from an injury in 2023.”
She and Luke joined Chance at RodeoHouston this week, soaking in the rodeo atmosphere.
“He’s living it up here,” she said of Luke. “Riding bikes and roping dummies with the other rodeo kids.”
Howard is all in on seeing her husband make it all the way to Las Vegas and the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR), and she’s got big goals of her own for 2025.
“I bought my IPRA card this year,” Howard said. “There’s a bunch of us who are all rookies this year, so it will be a rat race for sure, but I hope to make a push for Rookie of the Year and the IFR.”
The synergy of the WCRA, International Professional Rodeo Association (IPRA), and Indian National Finals Rodeo (INFR) has helped her solidify those goals.
“The IPRA has got a great working relationship with the WCRA,” she said. “So that makes it nice.”
“And the INFR is a staple for a lot of my points for the WCRA,” she added.
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Points are accrued for WCRA and WRWC leaderboards through the Virtual Rodeo Qualifier (VRQ) nomination system.
“That has worked really well for me,” Howard said. “And I’m grateful for it.”
A member of the Choctaw Nation, Howard said she loves competing at Indian rodeos—especially because they allow her to compete alongside her husband.
At the INFR in Las Vegas last fall, Howard and her mare, Tango, won a go-round and finished Reserve World Champion, earning a spot in The American Contender Tournament. Unfortunately, a broken foot disrupted those plans.
“I’ve got a cool gelding who had some ground trouble and pancaked with me,” Howard said. “I broke my foot in five places.”
“By the grace of God, I didn’t have to have surgery,” she added. “The ortho doctor was dumbfounded that everything was still aligned.”
Howard competed at The American in a walking boot and has continued therapy to aid the healing process.
“It still swells up and gets all black and blue,” she said. “But nothing I can’t handle.”
“The horse does all the hard work anyway, right?” she added with a grin. “I just have to stay in the buggy.”
Tango, a 7-year-old AQHA mare registered as Shes Fab N Fly, is by Tres Seis stallion View My Flying and out of Fabulous In Diamonds.
“I bred, raised and trained her,” Howard said. “Last year was our first full year of rodeo, getting seasoned. In addition to the INFR, we made the ACRA and CRRA finals.”
“She’s a mare,” Howard said, laughing. “A little bit of a dragon, but she’s honest and she’s got a lot of try.”
Howard grew up in Whitesboro, Texas, in a rodeo family, though she stepped back from rodeo during school. She attended Southeastern Oklahoma State University, where she played volleyball and cheered, before earning her graduate degree from Parker University in Dallas.
She and Chance now live in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, to be close to his family.
“They are a great rodeo and Christian family,” Howard said. “And we wanted to have Luke close to them.”
That commitment to family is part of why she and Chance appreciate the WCRA. They’ve been nominating events like Rodeo Corpus Christi and the WRWC for Kelsey.
“We’ve actually got a couple of INFR rodeos in Arizona at the same time,” she said. “So we’re getting together with some other families—hauling calf horses and they’re hauling barrel horses. We’re helping each other out.”
“Hopefully, we can fly around and try to make everything.”
As for the Kid Rock drag-race-style start at Rodeo Corpus, Howard is optimistic.
“She’s a dragon,” she said of Tango. “But I can keep her where I need her until it’s go time. I think we’ll be OK.”
“We’ll just go enjoy it and do our best,” she added. “I’m so grateful to get to go compete at this level again, after having a kid and being away from it.”
The first two weeks of May are shaping up to be busy for Howard, with Rodeo Corpus Christi May 7–10 and the WRWC the following week, along with Kid Rock’s Rock N Rodeo—if she finishes in the top two at Corpus.
It’s a lot, but for Howard, it’s no big deal.
“I’ve blocked it off the clinic schedule,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll go make a week of it.”
