From Suits to Jeans
By: Ruth Nicolaus
Horses, barrel racing stress reliever for local banker
Delano cowgirl Ashley Dolphin is a barrel racer and will compete at the Hamel Rodeo on July 6. Photo courtesy Dolphin.
Hamel, Minn. – Ashley Dolphin’s favorite relaxation technique involves four hooves, a mane, and a tail.
The Delano, Minn. woman spends her days in front of a computer as a commercial loan officer at a bank and her evenings and weekends on a horse.
A barrel racer, she began riding at age two on ponies inherited from her aunt, who taught her how to run barrels.
Now she’s competing at the Hamel Rodeo this week.
Dolphin and her husband Jon breed and raise quarter horses and she puts the training on them. She competes mostly in barrel racing derbies and futurities and the occasional rodeo.
Her mount in Hamel will be a ten-year-old American Quarter Horse mare whose barn name is Lily and registered name is Repetition. Raised and trained by Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifier Danyelle Campbell, Dolphin was the mare’s first competition run when the horse was five years old. The mare has an accomplished pedigree in the barrel racing industry.
Lily “is an incredible athlete, most importantly,” Dolphin said. “She has an extremely good work ethic. She will bust her butt doing whatever you want her to do.”
The mare is also “a bit challenging,” she said. “She’s not the most friendly, sweetheart horse to have. But she’s fast, she wins, and she knows what to do when she gets in there. You put up with the idiosyncrasies, because they give you something special.”
Dolphin and her husband have two sons, ages 5 and 3, who travel with them when she competes at derbies and futurities on the weekends.
Ashley and Jon Dolphin and their sons. Ashley works in the banking industry and competes in barrel races on the weekends. Photo courtesy Lindsay van Bergen
“The rodeo life is more nomadic than the derby and futurity worlds,” she said. With derbies and futurities, they can stay in one place for several days instead of hitting a rodeo each day. “But there are a lot of really great rodeos that are close by, so we make them when we can.”
She is glad to switch clothes when she heads to the barn after a day of work. “My natural habitat is jeans, a t-shirt and a ball cap,” she said. “It’s obviously quite different from how I look when I go to the office.”
There’s a difference between the world of horses and barrel racing and Dolphin’s daytime job, but she enjoys it.
“When you’re on that horse, they’ll only give you exactly what you’re asking for, if you’re asking for it in the right way. It’s a nice contrast to the stiffer, drier side of finance.”
Her sons and husband will be there to cheer her on at the Hamel Rodeo. The boys enjoy the atmosphere.
‘They’re excited,” she said. “They’re getting into what happens at the rodeo. They love the tractors, the cowboys, all the stuff that happens there.”
Barrel racing is one of seven events at the Hamel Rodeo, which runs July 6-9. Performances are at 7:30 pm nightly, with a matinee on July 8 at 1 pm.
All tickets are general admission and are $25, except for the Saturday matinee; those tickets are $18.
To purchase tickets and for more information, visit the website at HamelRodeo.org.