Krishaun Adair was riding horses and circling barrels at a young age.
By age four, the Point Blank, Texas native was born into a world where riding horses was a part of her life. Her maternal and paternal grandfathers both kept horses and rode trails. Her parents took it further, competing in their early 20s, around the same time they had her. Adair simply continued the line.
“I consider myself a third-generation cowgirl,” she says. “I just kept the legacy of my grandparents, and I think that they would be proud of me.”
Now in her forties, Adair has spent decades refining a craft that most people never even knew Black women were competing in. She is a barrel racer, rodeo host, and clinician, co-founding the STAR Rodeo Association with her husband, a Black-owned organization focused on mentoring the next generation of riders in Houston. But beyond titles and trophies, Adair represents a Black cowgirl who has refused to be invisible.
Adair was a shy, introverted child who found her voice in the arena. In a sport where wins are measured in thousandths of a second, she compares barrel racing to the 100-meter dash in its precision. She learned to be fiercely competitive while staying deeply rooted in the community. By her own count, it took her 40 years to get to where she is.
Her most celebrated achievement occurred in 2020 during the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo’s inaugural nationally televised event on CBS, which was broadcast live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Adair won the barrel racing and the steer decorating, claiming the all-around title on one of the biggest stages Black rodeo had ever seen.
More recently, she was awarded a $25,000 grant from Crown Royal to further her rodeo career, money she has channeled not into herself, but into her community. She uses the funds to attend high-level clinics across the country, absorbing the science of genetics, breeding, and horsemanship, then bringing that knowledge back home at a price her community can afford.
“I truly believe that if you take the heart that we have as Black women, and add the education, the knowledge, and the same quality of horses, then the sky’s the limit,” she says. “And that is not color specific.”
That philosophy is embedded in the structure of the STAR Rodeo Association she and her husband founded. The organization is open to everyone but Black-owned at its core, offering youth competitors a structured pipeline from the Wrangler Barrels division (ages five through eight) up through Junior Barrels and into Open competition. The goal is to create a continuous development path that builds the next generation of Black cowgirl barrel racers from the ground up.
Searcy Jordan, a rodeo judge for the STAR Association, has known Adair essentially his entire life. Their fathers rodeoed together; they were both on the Prairie View A&M University rodeo team and had watched this evolution up close.
What Jordan has witnessed over decades is a complete arc, from a young girl on a pony navigating youth rodeos, through high school and college competition, and into the amateur and professional levels where Adair now competes. That progression, he says, is something most people never fully appreciate from the outside.
“She is one of the few Black cowgirls out there who are truly competitive and who also train their own horses,” Jordan says. “You take young, homegrown horses, ones that aren’t totally finished, and you get them up to a level. That’s something in itself. And you can see it in the development of her whole horse program.”
That program now extends to Adair’s 10-year-old daughter, Kinley, who Jordan says rides “outstanding horses” and has already exceeded her mother’s expectations as a competitor.
“I would like to think I was passing the torch to her,” Adair says. “But she has become her own little trailblazer.”
Kinley grew up in a rodeo-centric environment shaped by her mother’s lifestyle, which involved daily work as an agricultural inspector followed by extensive horseback riding and competition during the summers. This total commitment to rodeo life, however, remains largely unnoticed by the wider public.
“When you go to research us or look for us or find us, we don’t have any household names,” Adair says plainly. “None of our names really rings a bell. And it’s getting better, but I still see a lot of interviews, and they’re all mostly cowboys.”
Adair is equally candid about the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a cultural anchor for the city. While she is grateful for Black Heritage Night, she believes more can be done. Specifically, she’d like to see the rodeo actively solicit a Black rodeo association to compete that night, rather than just fill entertainment slots.
I’m just grateful to God to have the opportunity to still do what I love because, still at over 40 years old, I still think it’s cool to be a cowgirl.
Krishaun Adair
“We have the entertainment. We’re there in volumes. The numbers are there,” she says. “But also, we don’t show up until the concert.”
For anyone who has never set foot in a rodeo arena but feels something pulling them toward it, Adair says, “just show up”. Go to a clinic. Attend a local rodeo. Walk up to a cowgirl and say hello.
“Cowboys and cowgirls are so humble,” Adair says. “I have met the highest award-winning cowboys and cowgirls, and they talk to you like you’re in the grocery store. You could walk up at 22 or 52 and say, “Hey, can I pet your horse?” And you may leave with a whole new family.”
Adair and the STAR Rodeo Association hosted a rodeo in New Caney, Texas, just outside of Houston near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the day after Black Heritage Night at the Livestock Show. The competition is open to everyone. And if you showed up, you just might see what a Black cowgirl looks like when the spotlight calls her name.
“Still at over 40 years old,” Adair says with a laugh, “I still think it’s cool to be a cowgirl.”
