North Fort Myers’ Margo Crowther defeated more than 1,100 competitors from all over the nation and world to win the National Barrel Horse Association world championship in Perry, Georgia, last month.

When is comes to horsemanship, Margo Crowther is the one to beat when she is in the saddle.

And there are a lot of people in her family who are pretty good up there, too.

On Halloween weekend, the 26-year-old mother of three was the best in the world, again.

Crowther defeated more than 1,100 competitors from all over the nation and world to win the National Barrel Horse Association world championship in Perry, Ga., with her mother finishing fifth.

Crowther said it was on her bucket list to win that event (and the nearly $19,000 in prize money that went with it) and to do it with her mother and daughter also competing was a bonus.

“That was exciting. It was really fun to finish in the top five with my mom,” Crowther said. “We got to spend the week together and she rode my daughter’s horse, who she didn’t ride since 2018.”

Crowther had raced at NBHA races throughout the year at the Lee County Posse Arena in North Fort Myers and other places in the state and earned enough points to qualify.

Each competitor had two chances to qualify for the finals. Crowther and her horse Sissy won the first go-round on a Monday, easily getting her in among the top 250 riders (male and female) to reach the finals and putting $3,200 in her pocket as the winner.

Crowther was going for more money in the second round, but knocked over a barrel for a five-second penalty, which eliminates you from winning anything.

“I knew I was making it to the finals so I chose to run for the go-round money and tune her up,” Crowther said. “I hit the second barrel leaving it and got no money for it.”

Crowther ran in the finals on a Saturday and drew the 228th position out of 250, putting her toward the end of the pack.

It was a long wait, but it was worth it as she ran a 14.441, just missing the arena record by .013 seconds and earning her a check for $5,500 to go along with the fastest time and highest money winner awards that paid an extra $10,000.

“It didn’t make a difference that I ran later. They drag the ground every five runs, so I was third in the drag,” Crowther said.

Adding to the excitement was that her mother, Anne Peters, who rode her granddaughter’s daughter’s horse Patron to a fifth-place finish in the 1-D class, placing both in the top five overall.

“My mom had ridden Patron before, but that was back in 2018. This year, when I realized Halloween didn’t fall during the week, I thought we should enter together,” Crowther said. “She’s been a huge part of my success, helping me with my kids, driving my rig and taking care of the horses. She’s been my right-hand girl and has always been there for me.”

Crowther said her mare Sissy has been on quite a roll of late, having won several high-money events. The weekend before, she won the New World Equestrian Center Sweepstakes and that paid $5,000.

Her daughter was reserve champion in that same race and won $1,400. She will run this summer at the NBHA Youth Show.

Crowther grew up around horses. Her mother has a ranch on Bayshore Road and her grandfather always had horses. Even early on in life she was racing competitively.

“My mom had shown reiners, pleasure and is such a great rider and I learned everything from her,” Crowther said.

When Crowther graduated from North Fort Myers High School in 2003, she got a rodeo scholarship at Vernon Community College in Texas before transferring to Tarleton State University, graduating in 2008 with a degree in business and marketing.

After college, she went on to compete professionally, performing at big rodeos in Cheyenne and Colorado Springs. At first, she was doing very well, on the cusp of being in the Top 15 and qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t last.

Her horse caught salmonella on the road and died, which devastated her and even put her barrel racing career on the sidelines as she didn’t have a horse that could replace her.

Crowther married her husband, Casey, they started a family, and she left the world of ultra-competitive racing for a while.

Their girls, Sawyer and Stella, are now 11 and 9.

Meanwhile, Crowther continued to compete locally and taught both daughters to ride. She also started her own horse breeding business and bought some horses who she thought had racing potential. They did, especially Sissy.

Crowther started taking barrel racing more seriously as a competitor and in 2016 started taking her horses to futurity events and did very well.

She went to the Arcadia fall rodeo and won, she went to the NBHA State finals in June and won against more than 900 other entries. She then went to the WPRA finals and won the average and nearly $16,000, her first world championship.

With that, she was convinced to go all-in on barrel racing again and returned to the rodeo circuit and hit the big-time events in the south.

She and Sissy, and another mare, She’s Packin’ Fame, went on the road, with the latter horse having won more than $250,000 in prize money.

In 2017, she reached the semi-finals of The American, one of the biggest one-day races in the world, at Texas Stadium, and earned more than $80,000 in prize money. Her barrel racing career was again in full swing.

She then took some time off from competing for their third child, a daughter, Saylor, is now 2.

She didn’t completely sideline the rodeo life, though. She started putting on and promoting her own shows. She and her husband started their own rodeo, the Fort Myers PRCA Rodeo, in 2013 and it was a huge success until 2019 (the last of which she won the barrel racing).

The pandemic shut the rodeo down the following two years and it doesn’t seem as though it will return in that form any time soon, though she hopes to put on a fall rodeo event in 2022.

Crowther said she plans on running more races, including one over the Thanksgiving weekend at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala. In December, she will watch her daughter, Stella, compete in a junior event in Las Vegas on Dec. 1 to 6 called Vegas’ Toughest.

Crowther said that she is happy to have done something she always wanted to do.

“I get to check that off my bucket list. I’m sure I’ll enter again, but it’s nice to have the pressure off myself to win that title,” Crowther said.