At the 2025 Cinch RSNC World Finals, four standout ranch sorters—Kody Ward, Aubree Coker, Kara Doornink and Nicki Fuller—won their divisions in the Holiday Auto Group Challenge of the Champions, an elite event featuring the best of the best. The class showcases the highest-earning ranch sorters from the season, with only the top five riders from each division—Open, Amateur, Novice and Rookie—invited to compete. A sudden-death, round-robin format means each contestant rides with every other in their division. Final standings are then based on the total number of cattle sorted in the least amount of time
To start the season, Kara Doornink, of Sundance, Wyoming, set some lofty goals for herself, but they didn’t yet include the Challenge of the Champions.
“I had set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to win the Wyoming State Championship and to be in the Hall of Fame in the bronze division, which I did meet in October,” she said. “By then, I had been in that top five and I was like, well, there’s a lot of year left. I should try and be in this top five.”
Competing with her husband, No. 2 Kris, and their children, too, the young family covered a lot of miles between last year’s World Finals and this one, helping Doornink qualify for the Challenge of the Champions Novice division with $34,956. On the evening of the event, a couple of solid first runs set up enough of a safety net to carry her through a no-time on her fourth.
“I had a pretty good idea [of where I was in the running], and I was just hoping to stay clean on four,” Doornink said of going into her last round robin run. “But then I kind of made a little mistake, but that’s okay.
Doornink was carried to her victory aboard 2021 red road Metallic Little Lynx (Metallic Cat x Marina Rey)—a horse that came from Kody Ward’s barn—but she credits her husband for helping her meet the goals she set.
“He’s always there for me and he’s definitely my biggest supporter and my biggest cheerleader.”
This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of The Ranch Sorter, featuring World Champion stories, event recaps, regional results, and more.
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