Oklahoma: Trainer faces life’s challenges head on

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) — Jennifer Cunningham takes her joy from family, her passion from horses and her strength from her faith.

But she takes her creed from a favorite children’s film.

“One simple motto I like to live by is from the movie Nemo — ’just keep swimming!’ “ said Cunningham. “I like to say that on tough days just keep swimming because that’s all any of us can do. Just keeping moving, just keep trying.”

Cunningham has had her share of tough days.

Between the births of now-6-year-old Keaton and baby Falyn, born in June, Jennifer and her husband, Ty, lost a set of twins and another baby. When Keaton was a toddler Jennifer suffered a devastating leg injury while playing softball that required a lot of down time and several surgeries.

“That took me out for 2 1/2 years,” she said of the August 2004 injury and ensuing ordeal. “I wasn’t even walking normally again until the middle of 2006. I spent an entire football season walking on a broken ankle. I had surgery the Monday after the last football game.”

She started this football season on the sidelines, recuperating from skeletal injuries suffered while giving birth to Falyn.

“I’ve had 10 surgeries over the last five or six years,” Jennifer said. “That’s why I haven’t been riding.”

More than a bit inconvenient for the woman who, with husband Ty, supervises Oklahoma State University’s Spirit Riders team. They also are caretakers and trainers for Bullet, the American quarter horse gelding that charges onto the field at Boone Pickens Stadium with every Oklahoma State Cowboy touchdown.

They both have extensive experience with the spirit team. Ty, a Jay High School graduate and now 33, was Oklahoma State’s Spirit Rider his senior year and Jennifer, a Sand Springs native and now 30, was Spirit Rider her senior year as well. The couple both earned bachelor degrees in animal science at Oklahoma State.

The Sand Springs couple puts that to work in their horse operation. It’s Ty’s help with the team and at home that promotes Jennifer’s success as a mom, a Spirit Team coordinator, a rancher and a drafting designer at her parents’ company that designs sprinkler systems for commercial buildings, she said.

Her parents, Ernie and Wilma Roberts, who board Bullet at their Tulsa cutting horse ranch, also contribute, Jennifer said.

My mom will pick my daughter up from school for me a couple of days a week or come over and hold the baby while I’m doing laundry,” said Jennifer, who is still months from full recovery from her childbirth injuries. “Ty and I help each other. We make everything a team effort.”

That includes horse training when Jennifer is healthy, judging or assisting judges as ring stewards in horse shows, working with Bullet and the team and managing to work in family vacations to Disney World or ski slopes when schedules allow.

“We do it all with our children at our sides,” Jennifer said. “They truly always are with us. We are rarely apart. We pretty much do everything as a family.”