Wrangling up success: Chisholm part of national champion horse team

Only one year after graduating from Graham High School, Lela Chisholm can already call herself a national champion.

Chisholm and the West Texas A&M University’s Ranch Horse team won their first national Division I championship at the National Intercollegiate Ranch and Stock Horse Association’s Collegiate National Championship Show in Amarillo.

The NIRSHA championship was held April 14-16 at the Amarillo Tri-State Fairgrounds. 

Riders competed in two go-rounds in four classes of ranch reining, stock horse pleasure, ranch trail and cow work which were split into the divisions of novice, limited nonprofessional and nonprofessional.

In the novice division, Chisholm was seventh with her horse partner Bossy Boons. The two have been a duo since August 2024. 

Though this was her first year on the team, she felt everyone worked hard to achieve the championship.

“Being able to call myself a national champion and being a part of a national championship team is really rewarding,” Chisholm said. “...It took a lot of work throughout the year. I myself had some little troubles throughout the way, but through all of it, I had my team, and we were all so supportive of each other. I really felt like we deserved it.”

The higher you place in the competition, the more points are awarded to the team overall. Chisholm worked with Bossy Boons to show off their best for the team.

“I had to do a lot of practice in the four events to make sure my horse was at his highest performance,” she said. “I did a lot of practice throughout those to make sure that I could perform the best for my team. It just took a lot of practice by myself as well, not just with my team.”

The horse team dethroned four-time champion Texas Tech University, who came in second at the competition. Also competing in Division 1 were Texas A&M University and New Mexico State University.

“We beat Texas Tech by one point in the team composite score. That was breathtaking because that’s really close,” Chisholm said. “They’ve beaten us the last few years so to be able to finally beat them for once, that was extremely rewarding, because they’re our biggest competition.”

The excitement of Chisholm extended to her coaches Dr. Lance Baker and Sidney Dunkel. 

Baker, who is professor of animal science in the Department of Agricultural Science in the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, expressed his excitement for the win.

“Since I took over the team in 2020, my goal was to compete in the Division 1 level and to win the two championship shows in our sport,” he said. “We won the Stock Horse of Texas world championship in 2023, and this year it all came together with our first-ever NIRSHA national championship.

Chisholm said the team had attended multiple shows throughout the year and worked on improving themselves each time. 

“We have practices almost four days a week, and that’s team practices. Through those we’ve worked through any of the trials that we’ve had with our horses,” she said. “It really all came down to all of us taking everything that we’ve learned throughout this semester and last semester and putting it into this national show and showing our horses to the best of their ability and what we know that they’re capable of.”

For Chisholm, her passion for riding started her sophomore year at GHS, when she had played sports and felt a calling for something more. Her stepdad Bruce Logan is a horse trainer in Loving and showed her the ropes.

“Whenever I met him, he was involved in this industry and so I was surrounded by it, but it took me a little bit to actually join him in doing it,” she said. “He was so inviting whenever I told him that I wanted to start doing what he does. …He’s taught me pretty much everything I know from whenever I started my sophomore year, and he’s the entire reason that I’m where I’m at today.”

She later competed in a Stock Horse of Texas Show and saw colleges competing and decided she wanted to be a part of the WT Ranch Horse team. 

Chisholm spoke with coaches on the WT Ranch Horse team at a competition, sent them videos of her past runs and then she interviewed with the coaches and team. 

“A lot of what I did was basically show (my coach) the quality of my horse and the quality of my performance as a horseman, and then talking to (my coach) about some of my goals and talking to the team. After that is when he offered me a position on the team,” she said.

What became an interest in high school is now a passion that Chisholm is looking to follow after college. 
She said the community and her family have been supportive of all of her efforts since the beginning.

“I had so many friends that supported me throughout the way. Even those that didn’t do what I did, they barely understood it, but all of my friends were so supportive of it all the time and were always interested to hear about it. It was something new for them,” Chisholm said. “I have a lot of people in the community that supported me along the way, and I have some people in the community right now that sponsor me as I’m up here.”