Lauren Kalil’s series with the 2025 Tactical Games National Champions continues—this time with her first in-person guest. Becky Wagner won the Women’s 40+ division after going undefeated all season, and her path to the podium is unlike anything you’ve heard before.
Becky Wagner trains horses for a four-time Olympian. She has a prosthetic disc in her neck from a snowmobile accident. She used to send her uncle money as a kid to stop hunting—now she makes her own arrows with a recurve bow he sent her before he passed away. And in 2025, she won every single Tactical Games event she entered.
Lauren sat down with Becky in her living room for an interview that covered everything from getting her weenie bit by a horse (her dog’s weenie, to be clear) to dislocating her knee at her first Nationals and finishing anyway. What emerged was a portrait of someone who finds a way through no matter what—whether that’s completing a half-Ironman the day after her father died with a partially torn ACL, or learning to shoot with a high heart rate in her 40s after discovering Tactical Games while high on pain meds recovering from neck surgery.
This is the story of a crash test dummy who finally stopped crashing.
Becky’s official title is assistant rider for John Madden Sales—the home of Beezie Madden, a four-time Olympian in show jumping. Beezie won gold and individual bronze in Beijing, team gold in Athens, and team silver in Rio. She’s a two-time World Cup champion. If there’s one person to work for in the horse industry, it’s her.
Becky landed there 13 years ago and decided immediately that this would be her last horse job. When she stops working here, it’ll be because she’s done with horses entirely, not because she found something better.
Her role has evolved over the years. She used to travel to Florida with the team, riding client horses and doing everything. Now she stays home, manages young horses, and oversees a retirement program that John Madden built specifically for show horses. They have facilities that can house about 60 retired horses with 24/7 hay access, grain twice daily, and natural environments. The waiting list is ten horses deep.
This year she’s got three horses to sit on for the first time—breaking young horses is literally why her Instagram handle is “crash test becks.” She’s basically a crash test dummy for equines. The injuries that come with that territory would fill their own article.
Here’s where Becky’s story takes a turn nobody expects.
When she was about 10 years old, she made a box out of computer paper and scotch tape, cut a hole in the top, wrote “Save the Deer Fund” on it, filled it with her spare change, and had her mom ship it to her uncle in North Dakota. The uncle who was a professional bow hunter. Not compound bows—recurve. A stick and a string. He hunted all over the world with that setup.
She loved animals. Couldn’t understand why someone who loved horses and dogs would go shoot the pretty animals. She wanted to bring them home alive and be friends with them.
Fast forward to her late 30s. Her husband Steve started getting her into hunting. She didn’t know if she could pull the trigger on an animal. Something in her wanted to experience what her uncle did—she’d admired him her whole life, wanted to be like him—but she wasn’t sure she had it in her.
Then a buck walked out at maybe 50 yards, right before the end of legal shooting light. And something flipped in her brain. The primal part took over. She stopped thinking about the cute furry animal and started thinking about dinner.
The shot was clean. Cold and clear, no shaking, no nerves. Just focus. Then overwhelming responsibility hit—hoping she hadn’t wounded it, hoping she’d made it quick. The buck dropped 20 yards out. When Steve got back from hockey and they went to find it, she realized it was young—a three-pointer, too young to take by her current standards. But they processed him and ate him that winter. It was the only buck their family took that year.
She texted her uncle a photo: “Look, I did it. I know it’s not much, but I did it.” His response: “Coming from the girl that used to send me money to stop hunting. This is so great.”
He passed away unexpectedly a couple years later. But he’d seen that moment. The full circle. Now Becky makes arrows every winter the way he taught her cousin, who taught her. The recurve bow he sent her hangs in her house. Every time she picks it up, her first arrow goes exactly where she wants it. Something instinctual, maybe magical about that bow. The second through twelfth arrows? Those go everywhere. But that first one never misses.
Her goal is to take a deer with that recurve someday. It’s a huge responsibility—not much going on with a stick and a string—but she’s working toward it.
Becky’s shooting roots go back to Forest Lake Camp in Warrensburg, New York. Starting at age 12, she signed up for riflery every single time it appeared on the activity schedule. Learned to shoot .22 on a bolt action. Got all her rank patches—sharpshooter, the whole progression through different positions.
There was another kid, Matt Hoffer, in the boys camp. They competed all summer for best shot. Both dead-on during practice, highest scores every session. Then the championship tournament at the end of summer would come, and both of them would blow it in the first round. Every single year. The pressure got to them both.
She never won that tournament. So technically, her 2025 Tactical Games championship is the first time she’s ever won a national title at anything involving shooting. Took about 30 years, but she got there.
In winter 2022, Becky flipped a snowmobile.
She was following her friends Jason and Mark on a trail with rolling hills. They had 800cc sleds, she had a 600. They were popping the front end and jumping from hill to hill. She’d just figured out how to do that herself on her newer sled.
Then she hit a hill wrong. Mid-air, she knew it was going to hurt. There was another hill right there—not the rolling kind, a sharp one—and she didn’t clear it. The bottom of the sled hit the top of the hill. She slammed her head and the sled flipped multiple times.
When she came to, she was already standing up. Her first thought was to get out of the way because other riders were behind her and it was night. The sled was somehow upright and off. Her windshield was gone, face mask broken, handguard destroyed, start/stop switch snapped (which is why it was off). Mark had dumped his sled and sprinted back to catch her right as she stood up.
Neck problems started immediately and never stopped. Chiropractor, acupuncturist, prednisone, nerve medications—nothing touched the pain. By mid-summer she was acting like a Parkinson’s patient, constantly moving and pressing into things to stop the sensation. Her wedding was that summer. She was in serious pain for the whole thing.
The MRI after the wedding showed a burst disc. The material had filled the foraminal canal where nerves exit to her left arm. Her arm, lat, and pec all atrophied. By August, her left arm looked like a stick. She couldn’t pick up a coffee mug without feeling like she’d drop it.
Hospital for Special Surgery told her she needed surgery immediately or the damage would be permanent. Beginning of September, they replaced the disc with a prosthetic—titanium and something else. Half robot now. She woke up completely out of pain for the first time in months, with hand function restored.
Doesn’t set off metal detectors, though.
Steve and Becky were driving somewhere shortly after her surgery. She still had a bandage on her neck, scrolling through Instagram probably while still foggy from medication. She follows Margaux Alvarez from CrossFit. There was a photo of Margaux in a line with other athletes, plate carriers on, rifles slung, pistols on hips.
Becky’s reaction: “What is this?”
She clicked the Tactical Games tag and went down the rabbit hole immediately. By the time Steve came out of the convenience store, she’d already made up her mind: “I found my sport.”
She’d been doing CrossFit since 2014, loved it, but knew there was only so far she could go. Muscle-ups were hard. Handstand push-ups were doable but not a strength. Heavy lifting, burpees, pain tolerance—those she could do. But at her size and age, the CrossFit ceiling was real.
Tactical Games combined fitness she was good at with shooting she’d loved since childhood. She had an AR rifle and some pistols, but never knew anything like this existed.
That day in the truck, she might have signed up for Athlete Camp in Texas for April 2023. Tickets booked, Airbnb reserved, connecting with strangers from the Facebook group to share housing. That’s how she met her friend Cheryl—they’d talked online, booked the same Airbnb, met in the driveway having never seen each other before. Now they’re close friends.
The Tactical Games community works that way. Strangers become squadmates become best friends over a single weekend.
Becky’s first year was about one thing: being safe.
She’d focus so hard on safety procedures that she’d forget what she was actually supposed to do in the stage. At one event in South Carolina, there was a workout with rope climbs and burpees over bars as the scaled option. Jacob Heppner was there trying to get video of her.
Her brain said: “Go fast. Get over the bar, drop to the ground.”
Her body said: “I have no idea how to do that.”
She’d do the burpee, get over the bar, and just flail to the ground. Jacob’s assessment: “What were you doing? I wanted to video you, but that looked really weird. I wasn’t going to post that. I didn’t want to do you dirty like that, Becky.”
The whole first year was learning to make brain and body connect under stress. Safety procedures eventually became second nature. She still forces herself to think through them at the firing line, but they’re automatic now.
CrossFit helped with the fitness foundation—functional movement patterns, interval training, mobility. But shooting with a high heart rate? Moving and shooting? Thinking clearly while exhausted? All new.
Weirdly, she felt decent at shooting under elevated heart rate from the beginning. Never felt out of control or wild with it. Just had to learn the mechanics.
Becky’s first Nationals started like a dream and turned into a test of pure stubbornness.
Stage one was long range—11 targets out to 600-something yards, further than she’d ever shot before. She’d made a rookie mistake and changed her scope two weeks before Nationals (the NightForce NX8 1-8, which she still runs and loves). OG shooters went before her, dinging targets like it was nothing. She got to the line expecting disaster.
Ding ding ding ding ding. Cleared the whole thing.
She was the only woman to do it, one of only 11 people total before the wind picked up and made it harder. She won the stage. Dancing at the firing line, not even checking her time, just pure excitement.
Stage two was a two-gun, which humbled her a bit—she was slow but safe. Still learning.
Stage three was an obstacle course. Third obstacle in, she hopped down and landed wrong on the mulch. Her knee went sideways and got stuck—only halfway back in place. The patella was visibly displaced.
Most people would stop there.
Becky screamed at the people trying to get her a medic, flipped over the remaining four obstacles landing only on her left leg, did the monkey bars because she didn’t need her leg for that, watched the wall approach and wondered how she’d possibly get over it with a knee that wasn’t together, felt it slip back in on the way to the wall (which felt amazing), and finished the obstacle course. Slow, but finished. Middle of the pack because some people panicked on the obstacles.
Then she sat there processing what had just happened while a medic gave her ice and probably some Tylenol he wasn’t supposed to hand out.
The next stage was a four-and-a-half-mile trail run with a ruck sack. She stopped at CVS on the way, raided the tape and knee brace aisle, found a knee sleeve in her bag, and had the medics cut the back out of it for relief. Taped it together. Just kept it iced and elevated until go time.
She ran the whole thing with a knee that felt like nothing was holding it together—just focused on landing her right foot carefully, no torque, left foot right foot, one more step. Finished in 75 minutes, which wasn’t fast, but she finished. When they stripped the ruck off her, she started sobbing. Two more days to go and she had no idea how she’d make it.
She made it. Finished the weekend. Because Becky Wagner does not quit.
The year after her first Nationals, Becky had knee surgery. Came back too early. Won some events but wasn’t at full strength.
At the 2024 Nationals, she got picked to win in the pre-event predictions. Her knee didn’t hold up on the six-mile run. Made a mistake on the two-gun. Had to climb out of 10th place and didn’t podium.
That set the stage for 2025.
This year, Becky won everything. Ohio. New Hampshire. The first international event in Poland. And Nationals.
But when the Tactical Games podcast put out their podium predictions before Nationals, her name wasn’t mentioned. Not even once. Undefeated all season and completely overlooked.
Her reaction? She smiled. “Actually, this is kind of nice. No internet pressure at all.”
She texted Amanda (Nick Palacios’s wife) about something unrelated and mentioned it. Then Palacios himself texted her apologizing—he hadn’t even registered her name while doing the predictions. Her response: “Dude, it’s fine. I guess being undefeated is really forgettable. I love it. No pressure.”
Then she started getting texts from other people who’d listened to the podcast. They were mad on her behalf. She told them it was fine. Just a podcast.
Last year they’d picked her to win and she didn’t podium. This year they didn’t pick her and she won. It all balances out.
Hold my beer, indeed.
When Becky wins, she does a shoey—drinking from her shoe. Sal Hernandez started the tradition in Tactical Games, then retired from it, then made Austin do one in New Hampshire from someone else’s shoe.
Becky’s been strategic about it. At Nationals, she wore her winning shoes only during the two-gun stage, so there wasn’t much sweat ground in. New socks. Kicked the sand out right before putting them on for the ceremony. Cleanest shoey she’s ever done.
But then came the whiskey shots. She did a shoey plus about five shots of whiskey within an hour. On an empty stomach because they’d run out of food before she got through the line. She was drunk until later that night, sobered up before bed, and probably doesn’t remember all of it clearly.
Someone’s got to carry on the traditions.
What changed between 2024 and 2025?
Deliberate practice. Mindful repetition. Actually thinking about what she was doing instead of just doing it.
She’d load her trailer with the rower, bike, and shooting gear, drive to her range (about 50-60 yards of good shooting distance, 100 if she gets into the brush), and train specifically for tactical games scenarios. Box step-overs with weight, then shoot. Different distances. Positional shooting. Aggregate practice with steel.
One to two sessions per week at the range, staying until dark. Three to four hours each time, with two to three hours of actual focused work after setup and inevitable chatting.
Dry fire drills in the basement after conditioning on a Concept2 machine. Making herself do combinations that she knew she was terrible at. Identifying weaknesses and attacking them.
For next year, she’s putting her horse trailer down at the range permanently with all her equipment inside—yoke, everything. No more loading and unloading. Just grab the guns and go.
The mental side matters too. Control what you can control. Range everything. Make sure you’re dialed for the stage. Magazines loaded with the right ammo count. Guns clean enough to prevent stupid malfunctions. Sometimes she does a quick clean between day one and day two just for insurance.
Then go in knowing she can do it, give her best effort, and leave the rest to the big guy.
Becky’s already signed up for next year. Iowa, New Hampshire team event with Jess Bolton, and Italy (with mandatory Coliseum tourism and gelato).
The twist: she’s stepping up to Elite for at least one or two events.
Her friend Christie “loosely bullied” her into Iowa with the stipulation that they’d both do Elite there. Becky’s been stalking the elite women all year. She knows she can shoot with them—maybe not outshoot Jenay every time, but hang in there. The question is whether she can handle the heavier weights.
She almost did Elite in Poland but saw the sandbag stage specs and made the smart call. Elite women had to do 100 pounds for five reps, 150 for three reps, and 200 for one rep, all over a bar that came up to breast height on someone 5’2″. Four rounds of that. She’d never even lifted 150 before. If she couldn’t get the 200, she’d have to do four reps of 150 each round—28 total reps at a weight she’d never touched. She would’ve gotten stuck on round one.
Now she has until July to get stronger at the movements she needs. First regional isn’t until then, so she has time to build.
Nationals will still be Women’s 40+. Test the elite waters at regionals, defend the title at the big show.
The knee that dislocated at her first Nationals wasn’t a one-time thing. It had a decade of damage behind it.
2016: Training for a half-Ironman. Her father had just passed away. She was at a horse show with a client, kneeling to oil a horse’s foot before it went in the ring. Someone opened a lawn chair behind the horse. The young mare panicked and cow-kicked. Missed Becky’s face by eight inches, caught her knee, sent her flying eight feet across the aisle.
The half-Ironman was the next day. Father’s Day. She had to do it for her dad.
She finished. Almost got yanked off the course by a volunteer when her knee gave out on a turn during the run with two miles to go. Her response: “I have two miles to go and I’ve gone 70 miles this weekend. I will crawl to that finish line. Let go of me.”
The MRI showed partially torn ACL, PCL, and lateral meniscus. She chose not to have surgery because everything was partial and might scar over with strength training.
2021: Walking a horse up from the summer fields for the vet. Stepped in a tractor rut, tried to save her ankle, knee went pop. MRI showed the ACL hanging on by a thread. Doctor said she could repair it or try to live without it—people do it all the time. She’d just discovered Tactical Games wasn’t in her future yet, had a high-octane horse to ride that needed someone, so she hired a trainer (Adam Federer from Marcus Philly’s Functional Bodybuilding) and did intense rehab for two years instead of surgery.
2023: Dislocated the knee at Nationals. Finished anyway by taping it together every day.
2024: Finally had surgery.
2025: First year with nothing broken, nothing injured, nothing braced. Foreign feeling.
Lauren asked what it would take to get more women competing.
Becky’s answer: keep putting out content showing women doing it. Show that it’s not taboo. Women can push weight. Women can lift. You don’t have to be big and beefy and muscular.
Look at Jenay. Small frame, incredibly feminine, quiet until she’s in the game—and she moves a 200-pound sandbag that’s almost double her body weight. Three-time champion. Proof that this isn’t just for the giant dudes with tactical beards.
Shooting is empowering if you’ve never done it. The challenges make you approach life differently. You develop skills most people don’t have. You push through things most people never attempt.
The community will help you. Becky tells anyone who asks exactly what she knows—what the range is, how to do the stage, all of it. Because at the end of the day, she wants to beat you when you’re doing it the best you can.
You can know how to do everything. Can you pull it off?
Becky’s Instagram is @crashtestbecks (crash test dummy for horses, remember). She’ll answer any question without being snarky. Direct message her.
Just maybe don’t ask about muzzle devices on the Facebook page unless you want 700 sarcastic comments. The community has good hearts, but they like to throw punches.
Watch the full interview on Lauren Kalil’s YouTube channel, Queen of Hustle. This is part of her series catching up with all the 2025 Tactical Games National Champions. You can follow Lauren on Instagram or visit her website at laurenkalil.com.
