Customarily in sport, a ring or trophy awaits the individual victor or each member of a winning team, but not for the University of Idaho Rodeo Club — they get sparkling belt buckles and tailor-made saddles.
Colton Clark
Competing for the sanctioned National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA), Idaho’s club is limited in size, but considerable in talent. They took home top honors at October’s rodeo in Ontario, Oregon, hosted by Treasure Valley Community College — one of five regional annual rodeos — and the team is currently perched at second in the Northwest Region women’s standings.
They have four competitors — all of them women. Meanwhile, some of their regional competitors, composed from six other local schools in the women’s bracket, boast lineups featuring upwards of 50 contestants.
“(UI) used to have a great club and a rodeo in the Kibbie Dome, back when my mom was in school,” said senior agricultural business student and club president Janey Reeves. “ Compared to other regions, we don’t have a ton of members…It’s hard to do it on your own, but we always have a good showing, for example, at the college finals.”
From the small Idaho town of Melba, Reeves has been a lifetime rodeo athlete. She said her first time competing in a rodeo was around the age of four. Later, she won the national finals in junior high goat tying and attended Cochise College on the Arizona/Mexico border on a rodeo scholarship for two years.
When she returned to her home state, the rodeo club was in the beginning stages of reorganizing after a two-year hiatus. In 2015, after applying to the NIRA for recognition, the club was back.
That was only the first step.
Despite the Gem State’s bounteous rodeo history — each county puts on a rodeo and the Caldwell Night Rodeo was named a top 10 national rodeo by Travel Channel — there weren’t enough people for a team. There wasn’t enough interest.
Without the necessary infrastructure to house horses and with no practice grounds in the immediate vicinity, attracting teammates and spectators was challenging it still is. But in an agriculture-heavy community and at a university like UI, rural-raised and livestock-wise students are in abundance — getting them to simply show up is the goal.
“This is a land-grant school, so this is where the ag-based kids are. Those kids are typically the ones that rodeo,” said senior rodeo athlete and Ontario champion barrel racer Ryan Barnett. “So it’s just a backwards concept that we don’t even have a rodeo team here when almost everyone who goes here has some experience around cattle or horses.”
Barnett and Reeves each said they must make a trek simply to practice. Reeves drives daily to Colton, Washington, where some of her family friends allow her to accommodate her horse, train in calf-roping and her other events at her leisure. For Barnett, she ushers her equine into a horse trailer, secures it to the back of her truck and glides down the Lewiston Hill twice a week where she can practice at an indoor arena.
It’s almost entirely individual for the UI rodeo athlete. Each has their own practice grounds, away from Moscow, and for the most part, each travels separately to regional rodeos, which are fundamentally meets between the seven Northwest circuit schools — Blue Mountain Community College (Pendleton, Oregon), Treasure Valley Community College (Ontario, Oregon), Walla Walla Community College, Boise State, Eastern Oregon and Central Washington.
For some of these schools, there are rodeo teams, not clubs. The principal difference is funding – teams receive more financial assistance, practice and meet structure, and perhaps most importantly, a coach. Clubs are much more individual, so the organizational burden falls upon a few, instead of many.
“I’d like to see stability, where the burden isn’t on just a few. Right now Janey has taken on a big role and she’s competing. When you have a good viable club you can disperse the work,” said Dr. Gordon Murdoch, the club’s adviser and an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Science. “You could also get a coach. I’m not a coach. I know success and lack of success while watching, but I don’t know how to get people from one to the other. For the club to improve and get better at this, it would be beneficial to reach a size of maybe 15 people competing. That might be enough to bring in a coach and help them reach better levels.”
Even though the club is still in somewhat of a growing phase, success has been commonplace, especially in the last year.
Reeves, while donning the golden “I” on her leather vest, reached the college finals in Casper, Wyoming, in June of last year by placing top-three in her event. She flew out of the chutes, vaulted off her horse and hogtied her goat, placing second in the first go of the goat tying event. However, her goat stood up in a later round.
“That’s another factor of rodeo,” Reeves said. “You have to depend on livestock.”
Despite the adversity, they’re making it work. For many people from rural communities, agriculture and rodeo go hand in hand. These are the people the club hopes to attract. With a bit more structure, they could very well do just that.
“It can be a recruiting thing for people who are passionate about it that maybe weren’t choosing to come to UI cause they wanted to carry on rodeo and there, ‘I won’t have a chance to do it,’” Murdoch said. “So, I think we could be missing out on the opportunity for some good farm kids, rural kids that have great attributes. I like those people. Me facilitating the existence of the club, there’s a chance more of those people will be around.”
It’s a passion. Even with the arduous training schedule, little support, financial trials and nervousness on a stage with almost no Vandals supporters present, the UI Rodeo Club members relish the chance to extend it.
“They say the quickest way to become a millionaire rodeoer is to start with a billion dollars,” Barnett said.
But aside from that, she said, “I think it’s every little girl’s dream to own a horse.”
From April 14-15, the UI Rodeo Club will be in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, for the third to last weekend rodeo series of the spring season.
Colton Clark can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @coltonclark95.