By Mark Bedor

This hard working, classy gal is the Breed Liaison between APHA and CMSA, and one of our sport’s best goodwill ambassadors!

It’s a legendary American icon—the galloping horseback rider, riding hard to deliver a critical message. In 1775, the patriot Paul Revere blazed a trail into history, as he made his famous midnight ride to warn the leaders of the American Revolution that the British were  coming. Later in 1860, the Pony Express rider raced across a continent, through hostile territory, as they carried the mail from Missouri to Sacramento, California.

Cheryl McLane doesn’t have to worry about British sentries or Indian warriors, but CMSA may have no better messenger when it comes to spreading the word about our great sport. “I know she’s a great ambassador for CMSA, but she’s a great ambassador for the  American Paint Horse breed as well,” says American Paint Horse Association (APHA) Director of Public Relations and Marketing,
Jerry Circelli. “She rides Paints, she promotes people who ride Paints, she spreads the word about Paints to CMSA... and we try to spread the word about CMSA to our Paint people. So it’s really been a great alliance between CMSA and APHA. And we’re really hoping to build on that.

That relationship began about fi ve years ago. “I went to a Paint Show, and sat in that John Justin arena, and saw that it was just a packed house--their final night,” Cheryl recalls. “And I said, ‘Oh my gosh! Th is would be too cool to have a Mounted Shooting  exhibition during their World Show.” So McLane made an appointment with the APHA Executive Secretary, and sold the group on the idea. Mounted Shooting exhibitions have been a part of APHA World Shows ever since. Today she’s the Breed Liaison between APHA and CMSA. And it’s been a win-win for both associations. “We have just a massive number of Paint horses in the CMSA,” says Cheryl.

Every year, Cheryl comes up with a different way to showcase the sport at the APHA. Th is year, she created the “CMSA Paint Youth Challenge.” Th e challenge? Take a teen and her horse with no experience in mounted shooting, train them in less than 90 days, and have horse and rider make their mounted shooting debut at the APHA World Show. “Actually between her show schedule and mine, it
was about 45 days,” tells Cheryl of her work with 13-year-old Peyton Weldon. “ and it was a hit!”

Peyton and her horse Zip turned out to be the Show’s All Around Youth Champion, a victory that had been announced before the teen  made her debut shooting run. “Th e young lady had ridden earlier in her traditional English attire,” describes the APHA’s Circelli. “…but then came back in the arena (dressed Western) with guns blazing! ...Shootin’ the balloons and doing all those things that Cowboy Mounted Shooters do. And that really showed the versatility of the Paint horse.”

The APHA has at times, even featured mounted shooting on the cover of its publications. Cheryl’s work with the group was soon noticed by other breed associations as well.  “I think the APHA, highlighting CMSA the way they did, opened up doors for the Appaloosa people...and then of course, the AQHA then followed suit. But I think it was the APHA that really opened the doors to the breed organizations being interested in what we do."

For Cheryl, it’s the latest chapter in a life-long love affair with horses that began when she was a young girl. “It was just a dream of mine...and my parents found me a little Welsh pony,” she recalls. “It certainly wasn't a fancy deal. We didn’t have a lot of money at all. In fact, the way I hauled my horse around was in the back end of a pickup truck. And I thought that was the way everybody took their horses around.”

She met her husband, Todd when she was 14. They married after high school. He is not a horse guy. “He likes something with a stop and go button,” she laughs. "I told him when we got married it was for better or worse--and our horses! So he was stuck!"

Together they prospered, raising four children at the home on eight acres outside Houston, where they’ve lived for 30 years. Today they have seven grandchildren, all under the age of nine. Horses have almost always been part of the family. And Cheryl has been involved in most every equestrian discipline you can think of. She has been involved with stallion syndications, shown halter and
pleasure with the Palomino Association, and dabbled in team penning and cutting. But she’s been hooked on Mounted Shooting since she attended her first shoot back in 1998 in Columbus, Texas. “I showed up and took 2 horses and said, ‘Th is looks like too much fun!’ she remembers. “I called (former CMSA President) Frank Turben at the time (and said), ‘What do you need to do to start a club? How many members do you need?’ And he said, ‘Well, one!’ So I said, ‘Ok, sign me up!”

McLane co-founded the Gulf Coast Mounted Shooters, and served as its president for some nine years. And where there had been eight riders at that first match, the next year there were 22, and it doubled again and again. “That became the largest shoot in Texas for many, many years,” beams Cheryl. "And from that club, probably four other clubs started--which was a good thing! I always told ‘em, ‘Hey, you multiply by dividing--go for it!’ I never felt like it was competition."

And unlike other horseback endeavors, Cheryl’s love for mounted shooting has never waned. “Usually I have a tendency, once I feel like I've accomplished what I've wanted to do, I move on,” she reflects. “But it’s still a rush as soon as you enter that arena! It’s fun every time!"

“I like the fact that its me and the clock and my horse,”she continues. “It takes all of the politics out of the sport. And of course the other  thing is, the camaraderie with the shooters. I don’t know what it is about mounted shooting, but it attracts, for the most part, just a super group of people. They're patriotic, they like totin' guns, they like the Constitution, they're naturally, horse people. It’s just a fun group! I've enjoyed it from the very moment I got started.”

And Cheryl spreads that enthusiasm wherever she goes, including Colorado’s “M Lazy C Ranch,” owned by fellow CMSA members Brenda and Randy Myers. Cheryl and her husband, Todd, spend much of their summers on the spread outside Colorado Springs. Randy Myers and Cheryl were both inducted into CMSA’s Hall of Fame the same year. Together they’ve introduced many guests
of the M Lazy C to Mounted Shooting, putting on exhibitions both at the Ranch and at the PRCA Rodeo in Colorado Springs. “Th is summer, people came up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much for your help last year! I've loved mounted shooting this year!’ I didn’t even remember most of ‘em,” she laughs. “You know, just so many people!”

Along the way, this Senior Lady’s Three has picked up a few trophies. For the start of the 2010 season, she recently took Overall  Championship at a match in Hubbard, TX, possibly making her the first SL3 to garner such a position. Th is past year she won the 2009 High Point in her class, and took the Senior Lady’s Three World Championship in 2008. She competes on a retired cutting horse champion named A Cut of Gay N Doc. “His barn name when I bought him was Pistol Pete,” says Cheryl, “I thought with breeding like his and a barn name like that surely I couldn't miss with him converting from the cutting pen to the shooting game.
Th e once-retired stallion turned shooting horse quickly became a gelding once I bought him. It was not easy to do, but I did not want a stallion boarded at my home.” The stallion is of course, a registered Paint. “I'll be honest with you. Color isn’t my first priority,” she admits. “I want a good, solid confirmation... nice, broke horse. But if I can get something, naturally, that’s pretty, and if you can get the package deal, then there's just nothing better! And nowadays you can find that,” Cheryl continues. “Th e breeding in the Paint Horse industry is just phenomenal! And they just have such superior athletes. And I feel like if you can ride a horse that has the confirmation to do what you want it to do, and look good doin’ it, then that’s just all the better. I like the color, I like the flash of a Paint horse."

But McLane isn’t on the road to a CMSA match every weekend. “I don't do it so much that it becomes a point of burnout,” she explains. “I do it just enough that every time I go, it’s a rush. So I kind’a like to keep a balance there.”

It’s easy for Cheryl to keep Mounted Shooting in  perspective. She’s a four-time cancer survivor. First diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38, she hasn’t let her recurring battles with the disease slow her down one bit. “It hasn’t,” she reveals. “I’ve gone to matches with stitches still in, and doctors just (saying),‘You wanna do what?’” “I kind’a scheduled my competitions and matches around cancer surgery,” she says with a brave laugh.

“And that’s probably why I think the mounted shooting is just a total distraction for me, from things that are pretty serious. It just kind’a takes you out of reality for a little while, and that’s a good thing.”

For the last five years, Cheryl’s helped put on a benefit CMSA match that’s raised around $17,000 so far, in the fight against cancer. “Everybody’s affected by cancer,” she says. “We’ve always had great turnouts at the cancer benefits.” Now cancer free for six years, you’d never guess this athletic rider (who by the way, was voted as the Most Athletic in High School), who also enjoys snow skiing,
has endured such a battle. “I tell women all the time you can get diagnosed with this stinkin’ disease and beat it,” says Cheryl, “I’m livin’ proof. You look through life in a diff erent way,” she reflects. “Every day’s a gift. It strengthens your resolve. You just don’t take life too serious. You kind’a prioritize things. And you treasure your family.”

Family comes first. Fifteen-year-old daughter April is the last child still at home. She joins Mom at shoots when she can. Eight-year-old grandson Benjamin, comes along sometimes, too. “We're three generation shooters. He went to a couple of matches as a little Wrangler. But it wears his grandmother out!” she confesses. “...so between him and my daughter and myself, I stay busy!”
All three of Cheryl’s adult children and the seven grandkids are still in Texas. “I’m fortunate to have ‘em all here. And they’re certainly a priority and bring us a great amount of joy.” As any mounted shooter knows, joy is a great way to describe the feeling of running that
arena. And lots of Mounted Shooters sitting on a Paint and many other horses might never have experienced that, if not for the tireless efforts of Cheryl McLane to spread the word.