by Bob Carson

Editor’s Note: The USTA website is pleased to present freelance writer Bob Carson and his popular “Outside the Box” features. This monthly series is a menu of outlandish proposals presented with a wink — but the purpose behind them is serious. The views contained in this column are that of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Trotting Association.

Bob Carson

At Mayberry High School with your graduating class of 64 students, you were the star quarterback of the Mayberry Galloping Goobers football team. When the Goobers played the rival Cranky Corners Comets, you were the big man on campus. In the spring, you were the captain of the Goobers tennis team and earned all-conference accolades. This feat was possible because half of the high schools in the Podunk Conference did not even have tennis teams. Academically, you always ranked in the top 20 of your class. Socially, you knew everyone and everyone knew you.

If you have been a big fish in a small pond, you know it is fun. You also know deep down in your psyche, that away from Mayberry, at a massive school that plays against other massive schools, you would probably not even make the team, or if you did, you would not play very often.

This scenario plays out in business, social spheres, college selections, golf leagues and numerous other facets of our lives. Recently, my horse partner and I applied this small pond paradigm to our harness racing affliction. We selected a very small pond and splashed around. Our dip was refreshing.

We jumped into our small pond in 2014. It was time to breed our only trotting mare. We live in Ohio, a strong, growing program that has many fine trotting sires. The normal choice was to select an Ohio stallion. We, especially me, are not normal. I pushed for an odd choice, breeding our mare to a New Jersey stallion. Except for a bacchanalian road trip to Atlantic City during a college spring break, we knew zero about New Jersey, had never been to a New Jersey racetrack and did not really know any New Jersey residents.

A couple of things we did know. Due to complex political machinations, the New Jersey racetracks do not have slot machine revenue and the Meadowlands Racetrack remains the flagship of harness racing.

Another thing we knew, or at least projected, was that the crop of foals eligible to race in New Jersey stakes in the year 2017 looked to be small. Several factors played into our thought process. The primary NJ stallion in 2014, Wishing Stone (who we really, really liked), was about to breed his first crop while still racing. Wishing Stone was a wonder on the track, but his small stature might defer breeders from sending top mares to a sire in this program.

Regardless of how potential breeders felt about Wishing Stone, racing in the garden state is problematic. Owners do not have the fallback position of a fair racing circuit. There were some red flags, well, red flares that we had to consider before jumping into this pool.

Our big carrots was that casinos could arrive during the years our foal would be eligible. Even if slots did not inflate the purses in New Jersey, the big fish in a small pond scenario might play out and make stakes racing viable.

We blindly rolled the dice. One year later, we welcomed a nice Wishing Stone filly into the world. When the NJSS website posted the NJ eligible horses to race as 2-year-olds in 2017, we found only 11 trotting fillies listed. Astonishingly, trotting fillies were the largest class. We wished we had a NJ pacer because the pools for fillies and colts were not even puddles.

These numbers were very exciting. Our filly trotter was not in a small pool; we were in a teacup. Suddenly, our traditional horse ownership adventure veered into unforeseen territory. The day that we learned our crop was microscopic, our position as a swimmer in this small pool encouraged us to get out our microscope.

When you are a trainer or an owner of a yearling in a class of 300 trotting fillies, everything is a bit of a guess and a blur. Racing your horse in traditional state programs is all about speed. You can rest assured that several members of a huge class are destined to be fantastic racehorses. When you are part of a large number of competing classmates, it is difficult to realistically analyze, predict and track every single competitor.

Perhaps my partner and I are exceptions, but we had great fun over the long winter months delving into every single horse in our small pool. We excitedly followed more than the progress of our own filly. We spent hours looking deeply into the pedigrees of every other NJ trotting filly. We rated the production of every mare. We watched our classmates consigned to various sales. We kept on high alert for any sign of progress when training began. This added a new dimension to our traditional horse ownership experience.

Of course, “stalking” classmates would not make any difference. How fast and how many fillies showed up to race in the New Jersey stakes races was beyond our control. This is always the case in any program. However, the research of our small class was fun and different. The experience was like being in a small, local fantasy football league as opposed to a national fantasy football league.

We knew from the first day a comforting and unusual fact in this particular harness racing dance in the ownership game. If our filly could just qualify, she would race in the NJSS legs and in the $100,000 NJSS final. We knew that if only five trotting fillies qualified, we would cash a check. We knew that if we were the only filly that qualified, we would take all the money!

Our dreams of a great racehorse remained, they always do, but for once, merely qualifying began to feel like the finish line. Trotting a 2:07 mile would earn us a seat and checks in at least three relatively big races. This was awesome.

Did our dreams come true? Not exactly. Our filly, Far From A Wish, did qualify, she did make the sires stakes fields, but she was not the cream of the little crop. You might say we were a small fish in a small pond.

A little perspective goes a long way in this world of dreaming about champion racehorses. Owning a baby harness racehorse, for us, is supposed to be fun. Our year in New Jersey was fun.

We met new people along the way, nice people, from the breeder (Mike Gulotta), to the stakes office (Chris Castens), to the Standardbred owners’ association representative (Linda Goss), and to our trainer in New Jersey (Linda Toscano). Everyone was helpful. We felt appreciated. We learned. We raced at new racetracks. We had a young filly that was at least in the game. We had some action.

Contrast this to where in almost any other state program, our filly would probably not have made money. The bottom line was that splashing in our small pool was entertaining and interesting. In a large pool, we would have drowned. So keep your eyes open for those small pools, you might want to stick your toe in and splash around.