With an 85-horse stable spread across three states, Quarter Horse trainer Toby Keeton had plenty of candidates available for the Ruidoso Futurity time trials on Friday and Saturday at Ruidoso Downs. Keeton took two geldings – Getthere Fast and Otts Boy, each a winner of a 250-yard maiden race at Sam Houston Race Park in late April in his first start. At Ruidoso, Getthere Fast and Otts Boy won divisions of the 350-yard trials and are among the 10 qualifiers for the $1 million final on June 12. There were 30 trials with 290 starters. “There were two I wanted to bring,” Keeton said on Sunday evening. “It paid off. They both showed they could run when I broke them. “I put them on a pedestal. You can bring 15 or 20 to this son of a buck and you only have so many good ones.” The five fastest finishers on Friday and Saturday earned berths in the final. To put Keeton’s 100 percent strike rate in the trials into greater perspective, trainer Heath Taylor had 15 starters in the Ruidoso Futurity trials, won four divisions and has two finalists – the highly regarded Chasing AJ and Hes Judgeandjury, both trial race winners. Keeton, 57, was particularly enthusiastic about the win by Otts Boy, who won the 13th of 15 trials on Saturday in 17.84 seconds. Otts Boy was the only horse to break the 18-second barrier on Saturday. By comparison, all five of the qualifiers from Friday’s trials were timed in less than 18 seconds, led by Chasing AJ in 17.79 seconds. Keeton has not won a major futurity at Ruidoso Downs since Kiss My Hocks won the 2014 Ruidoso Futurity. Kiss My Hocks was the champion 2-year-old colt and overall champion 2-year-old that year. A win this year would not only end an eight-year drought for Keeton, but would provide a timely distraction from recent events. Keeton is from Uvalde, Texas, which has been the focus of international news since May 24 when an elementary school shooting led to the deaths of 19 students and two teachers. Keeton’s mother, a former school teacher, resides in Uvalde and is acquainted with Celia Gonzales, the 66-year-old grandmother of gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, who was later killed by law enforcement. Before the school shooting, Ramos shot his grandmother in the face. Gonzales is hospitalized in nearby San Antonio, where she was listed in fair condition on Monday, according to news reports. “That’s my mom‘s really good friend,” Keeton said quietly. “My mom taught school. It’s a bad deal.” Keeton has been in frequent contact with his mother in recent days, and said he is thinking of having her spend time with him in Ruidoso, N.M., to get away from Uvalde. “She’s so damn sad she just cries and cries,” Keeton said. “I may bring her up here.” Keeton’s upbringing in Uvalde included plenty of time around horses. His father had a few horses that raced on a small-town non-parimutuel circuit in south Texas in the 1980s. “That was a good town to grow up,” he said. “I galloped horses when I got out of school.” Keeton said he even lied on his trainer’s application back then, but was caught, which put his training career on pause. “I got ruled off,” he said. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, when modern parimutuel racing began in Texas, Keeton was involved. In 1991, Keeton trained at now-defunct Texas tracks such as Bandera Downs, northwest of San Antonio, and Manor Downs, east of Austin, and had a few runners at Ruidoso Downs. Today, with active stables at Ruidoso and Sam Houston and one at the Remington Park meeting that ended over the weekend, Keeton has been busy. His wife, Cindi, looks after the Sam Houston stable. On May 20, the stable’s Special Apollitical won the $255,400 Sam Houston Derby for his fourth win in seven starts. Later this year, the Keetons will race at Lone Star Park in Texas. Running those barns has kept Keeton away from Uvalde in recent months. “I’m not there as much as I’d like to,” he said. But the news reports, with familiar landmarks from his hometown, has weighed heavily on Keeton. “That town is tore up,” Keeton said. “What do you say to someone who lost a 10-year-old kid?”