American Mustangs and Matt Manroe: The Sky is the Limit!
A newspaper flies through the air, hits the front door, and falls to the porch with a thud.
Pedaling his bike swiftly through the streets of Houston, Texas, a young Matt Manroe is hardly aware of the American giants behind the doors of the homes on his childhood newspaper delivery route.
“It was a super cool period of time to live around NASA,” recollects Matt.
Matt is the Executive Director of Mustang Champions, a nonprofit in partnership with the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program, dedicated to the adoption and placement of American mustangs in government holding.
Known as “Space City,” all eyes were on Houston in the 1960s and 1970s. The United States was immersed in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and landing a man on the moon was one way to prove a country’s strength and superiority.
Houston was abuzz with growth and opportunity.
Matt reflects, “Ed White, the first man to walk in space, lived a couple of blocks away from my family. Fred Hayes from Apollo 13, his daughter was one of my friends.”
In fact, while Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon, Matt was launching the daily paper onto the famous astronaut’s front steps.
And yet, while other kids in Houston were looking toward space, Matt’s eyes were firmly fixated on horses. His sister, Beverly Manroe, was showing horses in the Houston area at the time and Matt often found himself at his sister’s horse shows.
“I was always fascinated by horses, even if it was just watching my sister ride them,” Matt recalls.
Eventually, the Manroe family moved from Houston to Austin.
Once in Austin, Beverly became heavily involved at an English show barn. One day, Beverly came home and told Matt that he was going to start going with her to learn how to clean stalls and tack schooling horses. Eventually, Matt started to ride and was able to take lessons for free.
The gravitational pull to the barn was strong. Matt rode a lot, every day of the year.
Because the barn that Beverly and Matt were at was a schooling facility, they would regularly get new horses. Many of these new horses were OTTBs (Off-The-Track-Thoroughbreds). It was up to the Manroe siblings to determine if the horse had the potential to be a show prospect. If the horse didn’t have the “right stuff” to be a show horse, the horse would then be moved into the schooling program instead. This gave a lot of OTTBs a second chance in life.
“I really enjoyed working with the green horses. I enjoyed getting them to settle and show what they were capable of doing,” Matt explains.
At the time, Matt didn’t know it, but his enjoyment of working with green OTTB horses foreshadowed his tireless work with mustangs.
Eventually, as Matt’s career in the advertising world blasted off, he had less time to ride. Yet, he could never quite shake his desire to work with horses.
Through a friend of Beverly’s, Matt had the opportunity to work on a marketing campaign for an event called Mustang Million.
“I did the campaign for that event, and it gave me the idea that owning a mustang might be an opportunity for my daughter and me to get into the horse world again. So, we adopted a couple of yearling mustangs. They’re 12 years old now and still live with us. Mustangs connect with you differently.”
Once engaged in the mustang community, Matt never looked back. Now, Matt serves as the Executive Director of Mustang Champions.
There are over 60,000 Mustangs on the range. These wild mustangs are living the life that we all imagine a wild horse should live.
However, there are also over 60,000 mustangs in some form of government holding. These mustangs will never return to their freedom. The mustangs in holding need a second chance. Mustang Champions’ mission is to give these horses their next career.
“Our objective at Mustang Champions is to help reduce the number of mustangs in holding by promoting mustangs as very versatile and adoptable horses. Saving mustangs is a life mission for many of us. Everybody helps everybody. Everybody wants mustangs to be successful as a companion or a champion.”
Mustang Champions hosts four marquis competitions throughout the year: Mustang Challenge, Mustang Classic, Mustang Magic, and Mustang Magic Youth Challenge. Through these competitions, mustangs demonstrate their talents in both Western and English disciplines in events such as reining, ranch riding, trail, dressage, show jumping, working equitation and more.
With each competition, there is an opportunity to win money and prizes. Both the Mustang Challenge and Mustang Classic have a total purse of $125,000 in cash and prizes available.
This year’s Mustang Challenge is a “go” soon, July 10th- July 12th.
The event will be held at South Point Arena in Las Vegas. The Champion of Mustang Challenge will go home with a $50,000 check.
Yet, all of the competitors are big winners. These horsemen and horsewomen have made a difference in the life of a horse that was in holding and in need of a second chance. A new chapter.
“A question I ask people is, do they even know what their passion is?” explains Matt. “I think you have to be true to your passions. And, when I was a young boy in Houston, I think my sister kind of rescued me. My give back to her was to work hard and learn. Because of my sister, I was lucky to discover the passion that I have for horses. Who knows who’s watching our work out there in the world? They may be influenced to help a mustang.”
From Space City to The City of Second Chances, Matt has always had his sights laser-focused on horses. He may not have ever dreamed of donning a space suit, but Matt is a special kind of American hero.
To learn more about Mustang Champions, please visit https://mustangchampions.org/
To watch the Mustang Challenge events coming up soon, tune into RideTV and Equus TV:
The featured picture is of Matt and his daughter, Nancy. They are atop their two adopted mustangs, Ash and Mid Summer Night’s Dream (Night).
