Summer Starlet - Wattswood Stables (David Watts and James Sherwood), BC Stables (John Bellinger and Brian Coelho), David Baggett, Bob Albritton & Jay Graham

There’s a whole lot of Texas A & M in the ownership group of Gr.1 Spinaway Stakes winner Summer Starlet.

“We’re a little in-bred on our ownership,” Bellinger said.

Bellinger, like Dave Baggett, Bob Albritton and Jay Graham, are members of the Texas A & M Board of Regents. Only Bellinger, who partners with Brian Coelho in BC Stables, and Albritton, who had a bad experience as an owner decades earlier, had ever owned a horse before last September. 

Watts is relatively new to the game, but his partner Sherwood, a long-time, close friend and former assistant of Summer Starlet’s trainer Steve Asmussen, has deep racing roots. “I’ve been around horses since I was born,” Sherwood, the son of a trainer, said. “Always loved it. They’re just such a beautiful animal, a majestic animal.”

His life around them was demanding. “It was a lot of work as a kid. I got up at 5 a.m. in the morning to feed horses; went to school, came back and took care of them. I did the whole gamut of being in the horse business. I broke them. That’s what I did as a kid.”