story by Hope Raley
Neola, Utah mother of four, Chelsie Jensen was raised at horse shows, taking naps in the stalls with the horses and watching all the talented competitors in various events. Her mother was a two-time Canadian National Champion English rider and she herself won reserve honors in western pleasure at a young age.
“I had a great family that supported my various ambitions and goals, and I was able to become a very well-rounded person,” said the 2022 Rocky Mountain Professional Rodeo Association Champion Barrel Racer. “I was a competitive swimmer, dabbled in ice skating, softball, track, tumbling, and finally settled on competitive cheerleading which opened a lot of doors for me going into high school and college.”
Chelsie got to travel all over the US with the competitive cheerleading but at the end of the day, she knew that she wanted to get back into horses full time. It was about that time that Chelsie met her husband, KB, while both were working cows on her family’s ranch in Talmage, Utah.
“KB grew up in rodeo and knew that I wanted to get into barrel racing, so he told me to take his old rope horse and go for it! That was in 2017 and I have been hooked since!”
KB recruited help from Fred Hunter for Chelsie and that is where she found her now champion barrel horse, C is For Cat aka: Smooth. Smooth and Chelsie worked at it but naturally had a lot of roadblocks that kept getting in their way such as Covid and Chelsie being diagnosed with cancer in 2020. In 2021 Chelsie and Smooth stumbled upon the RMPRA rodeos but didn’t know how many she could enter due to health reasons. The end of the season came and if she would have bought her membership, Chelsie and Smooth would have went into the finals sitting 8th.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘I am going to win the RMPRA Championship next year’ which is such a bold statement given the talent and tenacity that competes in this circuit,” explained Chelsie.
Her 2022 season started off rough, living a good distance from the rodeos and having to travel over two mountain passes to get to any of them. One trip that Chelsie will never forget is getting up at 3am and heading to Odgen slack.
“We hit black ice and totaled our trailer. My angels were with us, and the horses didn’t have a scratch on them.”
Smooth, who is a son of King of the Cats, won money as a cutting horse before he started his career as a barrel horse. He has only been running barrels for a few years and has already exceeded everyone’s expectations.
“He handles any ground- trashy, deep, dry, wet, anything you throw at him. We get each other, we are so in-tune to one another that we almost finish each other’s actions,” laughed Chelsie.
The ambidextrous 37-year-old enjoys spending time with her kids when she’s not trying to win rodeos.
“I love being active and spend as much time as I can with my kids, which usually consists of jumping on the trampoline, spontaneous dancing and singing concerts, tag, water fights, snowball fights, twister and lots of other games.”
Chelsie likes to map out her goals every year and does so by setting big goals for the year and then mapping out mini goals and checkpoints to execute them. Her next rodeo goal is to season her colts and get them running competitively.
“I would eventually like to fill my WPRA permit and show the world just how cool Smooth, and my colts are and how much heart and try they have.”