by Johna Cravens for the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo
FORT WORTH, Texas – The barrel racing at the 2023 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo finished with a Winn win. Sissy Winn of Corpus Christi was honored with the $5,000 Jerry Ann Taylor Best-Dressed Cowgirl Award at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo’s (FWSSR) ProRodeo Tournament.
Winn and her horse AR Dash Ta Flame (Scoop) finished third in the Championship Finals with a time of 16.42 seconds. She earned $8,000 for that round and a total of $13,760 in the competition. When the $5,000 bonus money for the Jerry Ann Taylor award is added to her total, Winn took home more than any other barrel racer except champion Jackie Ganter of Abilene.
This is the second consecutive Jerry Ann Taylor Award for Winn, who also took home the award last year. She received her second trophy bracelet from the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame and the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo.
Scoop and Winn were the first horse and rider team to compete in Friday night’s Semi-final B, and they stopped the clock with the fastest time of the rodeo – 16.24 seconds.
“Winning the Jerry Ann Taylor award last year was such an honor,” Winn said. “I knew I wanted to try to win it again if I got the chance.”
The award is only given at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR) and at the Championship Round of the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. Once she knew she would be in the finals, she and her mother Melissa went to work on an outfit.
“My mom and I stayed up all night to finish this,” Winn said. This year’s outfit included a bright blue hat, a white shirt with blue and black sequin trim on the sleeves and jeans embellished with red, white and blue rhinestone stars and white rhinestone writing spelling out “Land of the free because of the brave” on the outside of the leg.
Winn learned sewing from her mother, and they enjoy collaborating on her outfits.
The petite blonde is a product of high school rodeo. She competed in barrel racing, breakaway roping, goat tying, cutting and pole bending, and qualified for the national junior high and high school finals seven times.
She was the Texas High School Rodeo All-Around Champion in 2013. Winn was named Miss Rodeo Texas Princess in 2011 and Miss Rodeo Texas Teen in 2015. She graduated with honors from Texas A & M University in 2020 and qualified for her first NFR this past December.
Pam Minick of Fort Worth, a National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame board member and honoree and former WPRA vice president, said the award is to encourage women in professional rodeo to continue the tradition of wearing colorful western attire in the rodeo arena.
The award is named for Taylor, a Hall of Fame honoree who was known for her flamboyant style. She was a trick rider and trick roper who entered the hall in 1986 and died in 2012.
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