He and perennial top breeder Brittany Farms tied for the prestigious Bergstein-Proximity Award.

by Debbie Little

The reality of winning the Stan Bergstein-Proximity Achievement Award from the U.S. Harness Writers Association (USHWA) still hasn’t quite sunk in for The Meadowlands’ chief operating officer/general manager Jason Settlemoir.

“At 46, even being nominated for the award was an honor in itself,” said Settlemoir, who is one of the youngest people ever to receive the honor. “And then to get this award and be tied with Brittany Farms, a farm that has over decades and decades and decades produced some of the top horses in our sport, to me, was unheard of really.”

Voting for the 2023 award ended in a tie between Settlemoir and Brittany Farms, which announced in 2023 the winding down of their operation over the next three years.

“I thought for certain that Brittany was a slam dunk and that my time would come later,” Settlemoir said. “I couldn’t have been more surprised about the dead heat, and honored and grateful to receive this type of an award from my peers.”

The Bergstein-Proximity Award is “presented annually to an individual (including a horse as “individual”), group or organization for past and/or present outstanding contributions to harness racing.” It is the highest honor solely voted on by the members of USHWA.

It is not lost on Settlemoir, who, in part, the award is named for and who has won it before him.

Settlemoir was a vice-president for Harness Tracks of America (HTA) when Bergstein ran the organization.

“I was very fond of Stan growing up, God rest his soul,” Settlemoir said. “He communicated with me probably on a weekly basis when we had HTA. Stan was a great guy and to receive an award with his name on it is an honor in itself.”

The Bergstein-Proximity Award was won in 2006 by Hall of Famer Jeff Gural, the president/chief executive officer of The Meadowlands, and by the Hall of Fame “Voice” of harness racing and the Little Brown Jug, Roger Huston, in 2011. Those are two people that mean the world to Settlemoir.

“I have a lot of respect for the Gural name and admiration for him and his wife Paula,” Settlemoir said. “And then Roger, who I grew up idolizing. To be able to work with Roger in Delaware [Ohio]. Calling races with him is a dream in itself and to win the same award that both Roger and Jeff did, is truly magical to me.”

According to Gural, it was a real thrill for him to get the award named for Bergstein, and he couldn’t be happier for Settlemoir to receive the same honor.

“Jason deserves this award because of his passion for the sport and his willingness to be a USTA director and fight with me to help get rid of the drugs,” Gural said. “Right now, the leaders, and I assume a majority of the members, are focused on keeping the status quo despite overwhelming evidence that we have a major problem, and honest horsemen and women are at a disadvantage.

“Jason is great with people and our employees respond to him. He works tirelessly to improve the product and find ways to get young people interested. He also does a good job making sure the customer experience is enjoyable and helps dealing with the horsemen, which can be difficult at times. His life besides his family is devoted to our industry. Lastly, he probably was influential in getting me elected to the Hall of Fame, which couldn’t have been easy.”

Settlemoir was a senior in high school when he first started working with Huston during Little Brown Jug (LBJ) Week. Former LBJ director of marketing, Phil Terry, hired Settlemoir to put blankets on horses.

Knowing him as a youngster, Huston had no idea that Settlemoir would end up where he has, but he does remember he had the right attitude.

“The one thing I did notice was that he was a go-getter,” Huston said. “You gave him a task; he’d do it and he’d take it to heart and give it his all no matter what the chore was. That go-getter attitude that he had prompted him to go on to other and bigger things as his life progressed over the years.”

Settlemoir remembers being asked by Terry and LBJ former director of racing Tom Thomson to become Huston’s assistant announcer at the Jug.

“I said to them, ‘That would be an honor, but I would like for you to ask Sam McKee first’ and they said, ‘We already talked to Sam about it and Sam said that you’re from Ohio, from central Ohio, particularly, and that he wanted you to call the races,’” Settlemoir said. “That was just such an unselfish move and an example of the type of person that Sam was.”

Huston said Settlemoir became a jack-of-all-trades and does many jobs exceptionally well.

“He does a lot more than being the assistant announcer,” Huston said. “I mean, he’s in charge of simulcasting, he was selling advertising this year to get that purse [for the Jug] to a million dollars and he’s on the Jug Society. So, he’s heavily committed to Delaware [Ohio] and the Little Brown Jug.

“This year for the Jug, when we wanted to get to that million-dollar purse, who better than Jason Settlemoir to go get the money and do things like that. So that go-getter attitude and the early days of his life carried on and got him to where he is today.”

Settlemoir has had many people in his corner, both in and out of the State of Ohio, including trainer Terry Holton and Holton’s second trainer and former general manager of the OHHA, Jerry Knappenberger, both of whom played pivotal roles in the development of Settlemoir’s career.

In addition, throughout his life, Settlemoir has been surrounded by strong and supportive women, including his mom Charlamae, aunt Roberta, grandmother Helen, sister Lynn, and, of course, his Meadowlands’ family of Marianne Rotella (assistant general manager), Rachel Ryan (director of marketing and event operations) and Lisa Smoter (executive coordinator), that encouraged him to dream big.

As a teenager, Settlemoir looked up to Bergstein protégé Chris McErlean, the former vice-president of racing operations for the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the entity that oversaw the operation of The Meadowlands prior to Gural taking the helm in 2011.

“Growing up, I always wanted to run the Meadowlands Racetrack and it’s funny how things worked out,” Settlemoir said. “And here I am now and we’re coming off a fantastic year. It’s just unbelievable, really.”

“Not too many people get to live out their dreams in life. I have always lived by a motto from Walt Disney, ‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ That quote hangs proudly in my office and it just goes to show that if you dream big, and you put the hard work and the effort into it, that you can accomplish anything that you want to in life.”

Note: For a deeper dive into Settlemoir’s harness racing journey, please read Murray Brown’s HRU column from 2021.