NRCHA Stakes Open Novice Champions Bet Hesa Boon and Clayton Edsall are leading the Open after winning the herd work finals. • Photo by Molly Montag.

NRCHA Stakes: Bet Hesa Boon Wins Novice Horse, Leads Open Finals

As a sharp-looking blue roan, Bet Hesa Boon is a stallion tends to catch the eye of those around him. Hopefully he doesn’t mind, because his success so far at the National Reined Cow Horse Association (NRCHA) Stakes is probably going to get him even more attention.

Trainer Clayton Edsall and Beverly Vaughn’s stallion (Bet Hesa Cat x Flo N Blu Boon x Pretty Boy Boon) qualified for the NRCHA Stakes Open finals while winning the Open Novice Horse Championship during the preliminaries.

Their hot streak continued Friday night when they won the Open herd work finals with a 221. Bet Hesa Boon and Edsall will lead the field when the Open continues with the rein work Saturday afternoon and concludes with the cow work Saturday night.

“He likes to travel real low headed [and] he likes to work a cow real low headed,” Edsall said of the stallion bred by Gardiner Quarter Horses. “He’s got a lot of stop, a lot of turn. He’s just a pretty good individual, so if we can get him through the next two events, you know, hopefully we’ll end up at the top end there someplace.”

In addition to Bet Hesa Boon, Edsall qualified three other horses for the NRCHA Stakes Open finals: Bet He Sparks (Bet Hesa Cat x Sparking Train x Shining Spark), Metallic Train (Metallic Cat x Sparking Train x Shining Spark) and Shining CD Light (CD Lights x Jennys Spark x Shining Spark).

Edsall said he’s fortunate that all four horses are pretty easy to get along with and have all put in strong performances during the show held at the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“I’ve been able to have big runs on all of them, so we’ll just see if we can get through the reining and get some good draws in the fence and hopefully it all works out,” he said.

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