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KNOW THE PRO Texas-based trainer Sarah Murphey has gained experience working for established mentors in the equine industry. By Larri Jo Starkey
PRIMO MORALES
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t age 13, Sarah Murphey watched Bill Freeman work cutting horses. And that was it. Her life course was set. She had dreamed of becoming a trainer since age 11, and the experience of watching Freeman communicate with a horse for a positive outcome was the clincher on that dream. “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is it,’” she said. Murphey spent a year in college, but she left and never wavered again in her fixed goal of becoming a horse trainer, seeking out trainers she admired and working as an assistant trainer across the United States. Murphey’s life as a traveling assistant ended when she recently hung out her own shingle. In 2021, she won her first major title in the National Reined Cow Horse Association Stallion Stakes with HQ Wilma Gotta Kitty (Meteles Cat x Wilma Gotta Gun x Spooks Gotta Gun), a 2016 mare owned by Reid and Melanie Hockenson. That big win was just another step on a path that Murphey began as a teenager, when her supportive parents bought a green horse and sent him to trainer Luke Jones. “I started riding with Luke,” Murphey said. “And I went to Bill Freeman’s place for two summers as a teenager
50 MARCH/APRIL 2022 | REINED COW HORSE NEWS
Murphey has ridden to a couple of premier event Level 1 Limited Open titles in the last two years.
and worked for him. Bill was extremely encouraging. I just pulled this dream out of thin air. I showed up at a cutting clinic—a green rider and a 3-year-old reined cow horse. I was so starstruck by Bill and so nervous and out of place, but I just wanted to ride horses, you know? “I remember saying, ‘Just let me know what I’m doing wrong.’ And he was like, ‘Better yet, I’m gonna let you know everything you’re doing right,’ ” she added.
It was a whammo of a confidencebooster. “He was just encouraging from that moment on,” she said. “In the time I got to spend with him, he made me believe in myself. That’s a hard thing, I think, the belief that you can do it. It comes easy for some people, but it’s something I’ve had to work on.” Freeman’s lessons gave Murphey the gumption to walk up to National Reined Cow Horse Association Million Dollar Rider Boyd Rice in a parking
