Barrel Racing Champion Lily Wofford
Lily Wofford and her horse Cali won the 2026 Arkansas Rodeo Association barrel racing championship, all while Lily was being treated for breast cancer.
Recently, I interviewed Lily Wofford, owner of Wofford Ranch in Vilonia. This fall Lily and her horse Cali won the 2026 Arkansas Rodeo Association barrel racing championship. It capped two of the strongest seasons of her career, and she did it all while being treated for breast cancer. When I asked how she kept going, she said, "I'm going to be tired regardless, so I'll do something I enjoy." I wanted to share her story because she didn't set her goals aside when the news was hard. She kept competing at the top of her sport, and she kept winning.
Lily has been building toward this for most of her life. She is the fifth generation to grow up on her family's farm south of El Dorado, and as a girl she showed market lambs at the county fair to save up for her first barrel horse. She was active in 4-H, earned several rodeo queen titles, and studied business at the University of Central Arkansas before founding Wofford Ranch in 2014. Today the ranch is home to about 50 horses. Lily competes at WPRA pro rodeos, Arkansas Rodeo Association and Arkansas Cowboys Association rodeos, futurities and jackpots. She has earned money at the pro level, qualified for the Better Barrel Races World several times and the NBHA World Finals three times, and competed in the fastest division at the BFA World Championships.
At the ranch she coaches riders and trains futurity horses, the young horses just starting to compete. Her teaching centers on feel, which she builds through pressure and release, letting go the moment the horse takes a step in the right direction and then asking again. "A horse's body is a mirror of yours," she told me, and she watches closely for the small things a rider does that cause a horse to brace. Her favorite moment is when it finally clicks for a student, and this year her riders had strong finishes at both the ARA Finals and the Patriot.
Lily has kept all of this going through the hardest stretch of her life. At just 32, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she had to push to be taken seriously, something she now encourages others to do when something doesn't feel right. Her treatment was long and hard, with multiple surgeries followed by months of chemotherapy and radiation. Her cancer has not returned, and she continues treatment today with oral chemotherapy, hormone therapy and regular scans. She took only a few weeks out of the saddle, sending her horses to swim to keep them fit while she recovered, and she never missed a rodeo. As she put it, "If you don't ride, you don't run." In the middle of all that, she won a futurity championship, qualified for both the ARA and ACA Finals, and saw her horse Rooster named ARA Horse of the Year.
On her first run back, at a pro rodeo, Lily met a woman who had been in remission for five years. Lily calls that meeting a "God wink." This woman told her, "Don't let someone else tell you that you can't do something," and Lily held on to those words through chemo, thinking, "If she did it, I can too." Her mentor's cancer returned, and she passed away, but she had been generous with what she knew, and her influence reached many riders besides Lily. A few conversations at the right moment can matter more than we realize. Now Lily is often on the other side of that conversation. When someone who has just been diagnosed reaches out to her, she tells them what she was once told: don't let anyone tell you that you can't.
Encouraging others has always come naturally to Lily, but accepting help herself was harder, because she has always been independent and never wanted to inconvenience anyone. What she learned, in her words, is to "bless others by allowing them to bless you." The families she had taught for years, friends from the horse world and even clients' grandparents showed up for her. People now travel with her to help drive and saddle, and four assistant coaches keep lessons and training going at the ranch. Her phrase for facing something hard is "You pick your hard," and she applies it to her goals as well, setting big ones and working until she reaches them.
This year's ARA title was one of those big goals, and Lily reached it on Cali, a mare with a comeback story of her own. Cali started out as one of Lily's futurity horses and went on to a strong run in the Old Fort Days Derby and a trip to the BFA World Championships. There were setbacks along the way. Cali fractured her hip and spent eight months confined to a stall, and in 2025 an outbreak of equine herpesvirus shut down the BFA World Championships before Lily's horses could run. Lily kept bringing her back, and this September Cali ran at the Breeders Challenge Finale in Fort Worth. A few weeks later, she carried Lily to the championship.
Lily has a barn full of horses ready to show what they can do and students coming up behind her, and after the last two years, I'm looking forward to seeing what all of them do next.
I'm grateful to Lily for sharing her story so openly, and congratulations to her on the championship!!
Wofford Ranch offers year-round riding lessons for all levels, from beginners to pro barrel racers, and you can learn more at woffordranch.org or by calling 870-918-9348.
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