Retired from racing, two-time O'Brien Award-winning millionaire Willys Home Run is keeping it all in the family.

The five-year-old trotting distaff has joined her dam Rite Outa The Park as a foundation broodmare for an emerging family-run breeding farm in Ontario operated by the husband and wife team of high school teacher Jake Higgs and veterinarian Dr. Sara Gatchell. The part-owners of Willys Home Run reported that she was bred to Chapter Seven in the spring and is currently residing at New Pioneer Farm in Kentucky, where she will stay for the remainder the year to fulfill dual eligibility requirements. 

"We'll probably breed 'Willy' a few times at least in the States, and then hopefully we'll bring her home and start breeding her in Ontario as well," said Higgs.

An Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final champion at ages two and three, Willys Home Run put together a career record reading 13-10-3 from 47 starts while campaigned by the Fellows family -- trainers Rob and Kyle and co-owner Yolanda. Bred and also previously co-owned by Higgs' father Reg, the daughter of Archangel retired from racing in May with earnings totalling $1,045,794 and a lifetime mark of 1:51.1 taken in an Armbro Flight Stakes elimination at Woodbine Mohawk Park.

As Willys Home Run begins to pass along her prolific pedigree, her connections are hoping to carry on their own family legacy in the sport.

Lifelong harness racing fans introduced to the sport by their fathers, Higgs and Gatchell have recently moved to a 20-acre property southeast of Lucan, Ont. with their children and are in the process of setting up paddocks with plans to welcome some of their other mares to their new farm in the fall and eventually Willys Home Run in the future.

"My dad's been in the business kind of as his retirement project for 20 years, so we got into the business to kind of have something to do with him," said Higgs. "And now we're moving further into it mostly because 'Willy' was so successful. We reinvested a lot of the money she made into buying more mares. We've been looking for a farm for like four years, so we're finally in one. We got a nice spot, so we're really excited about the future."

Their other foundation mares include Rite Outa The Park along with stakes winner Grimmie Hanover, whose first racing foal, the Muscle Hill filly Orchestra, sold for $569,444 at last fall's Lexington Select Yearling Sale and finished third in the New Jersey Sire Stakes Platinum Championship earlier this month.

"This will be kind of our retirement plan," said Higgs. "That's our thought right now. We love the business. I grew up watching horse racing. My wife's from Truro, Nova Scotia and she always went to the races with her father. We both had a love for horse racing since we were kids, so it just makes sense that we're getting into it now, kind of as a fun thing to do moving forward." 

While they had always intended to breed Willys Home Run, determining the right time to retire her from racing was a balancing act for the couple in consultation with Team Fellows. Ultimately, the connections agreed this past spring was the time to move on to the breeding part of the game. Willys Home Run caught on the first try to Chapter Seven, solidifying the end of her racing career that had provided so many special moments for her connections.

Winning her first Ontario Sires Stakes Gold event in her second career start took Higgs by surprise and then the highlights kept coming as she swept the Golds before going on to earn O'Brien Award divisional honours as the top trotting filly in Canada back-to-back years in 2023 and 2024. Earning national recognition alongside her full brother Logan Park, who was bred and co-owned by Higgs' father and named after his son, was unforgettable.

"She was able to get through both of those years very successfully, which I think is unique," said Higgs. "It just was awesome going to the track and watching her be so successful.

"She was more than we could have imagined. She almost made a million in her first two years, and then we were able to bring her back as a four-year-old to get her over that plateau, which was nice. It's just been a whirlwind, and we realize that it may never happen again, but we're glad it happened at least once. We were very fortunate to step into the business and, basically, our first horse, it just worked out like this. It's a fairy tale, really."

Willys Home Run was special not only because she was a first-pitch home run for the couple, who had purchased Rite Outa The Park in foal from Higgs' father. She was named for Gatchell's late father William, fulfilling a childhood promise made while attending the races together.

"My father was a huge fan of harness racing, and so he would take me to the track," recalled Gatchell. "I loved it. It was quality time between my father and I. Neither one of us grew up on farms, but I loved the sport and, of course, I had a love for animals. My desire was always to be a veterinarian when I was young. So my father jokingly told me someday I'd have my farm and I'll buy us a horse. We'll buy a horse and we would name it after him, and we would then go around and watch it race at the tracks."

While her father was diagnosed with dementia that had progressed by the time Willys Home Run was racing, Gatchell still made sure he was able to watch his namesake's races back home and was surrounded by win photos of her many highlights.

"She was dominant in her two-year-old season," said Gatchell. "Her three-year-old season, obviously the competition was strong and she didn't win every race, and certainly she had some good battles."

For Gatchell, one race stands out in Willys Home Run's career that followed a week after the passing of her father.

"My father actually passed away a week before the Super Final [in her sophomore year]," she recalled. "We figured he must have given her one last push because when she came around the three-quarter mark, the turn and headed for home, she just had a burst of energy that came out of nowhere. And she won by lengths. So we laughed about that, saying that my dad must have been up there and gave her that last push."

Both Higgs and Gatchell are humbled by their harness racing home run and acknowledge Reg's pedigree prowess and their partnership with the Fellows for much of Willy's success.

"She's been just a pleasure and a dream,” said Gatchell. “And I know lots of people have waited their whole lives for a horse like that, and we were so fortunate that it was literally our first foal. And, of course, that was also why we held on to her because that was the idea that she would then keep her mom's bloodlines and that she would eventually join our broodmare band."

(Standardbred Canada)