Cowgirl Up! (20 page)

“We were trying to find balance as an association, and interest had fallen off among our members in rough-stock events,” stated WPRA's Ann Bleiker in a 2012 interview. “It didn't make sense to keep doing it.” The WPRA now focuses on the more popular roping and barrel racing.

Jan Youren of Idaho, five-time world champion bareback bronc rider who began in the 1950s, faults today's pro-rodeo's minimum age requirement of eighteen for limiting women rough-stock riders. The ruling was initiated by the PRCA and adopted by the WPRA in the mid-1990s.

“That was definitely the downfall,” she said in an
American Cowboy
interview. “You have to start things when you're young and invincible. By the time women are eighteen, they're thinking about other things.” Youren said she is disappointed that the sport seems to be fading away.

“It made my fifty years amount to nothing,” she said.

Jonnie Jonckowski, World Champion Female Bull Rider, retired from competition in 2000 when she was forty-six, and she now runs a nonprofit therapeutic riding organization in Billings. She, like Youren, was deliberate in trying to blaze a trail for women in rough stock: “That's why I campaigned so hard. I'd like to know that what I did all those years ago meant something. I know there are girls out there like me who crave that adrenaline.”

She believes women's rough-stock competition received a huge blow when the WPRA discontinued those events: “It lost its organization, and it lost its home.” Jonckowski would like to see a women's version of the Professional Bull Riders Association that would stage events at the PRCA rodeos.

The Ranch Rodeo Association is one organization that might help bring women back into the rough-stock arena. The Women's Ranch Rodeo Association and Ranch Cowgirls Rodeo Association feature team competitions in sorting, trailer loading, doctoring, tie-down (mugging), and branding. However, the Working Ranch Cowboy Association's World Championship Rodeo held in Amarillo, Texas, in November listed Ky Gripp of Texas as the 2013 Champion Women's Ranch Bronc Rider.

No Montana women currently compete in rough-stock events.

In 1988 eleven-year-old Rachael Myllymaki of Arlee was the second-youngest barrel racer ever to qualify for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas (before the rules were changed so women have to be eighteen). Competing for the fifty-thousand-dollar purse at the season-ending championship event for the PRCA, she had already won twenty-seven thousand dollars and had twenty-three victories in her first season of pro rodeo.

“It's extraordinary that an eleven-year-old is this good,” Lydia Moore, executive secretary of the WPRA, said in an interview that year. “A barrel-racing rider has to have a lot of courage because you're riding the horse extremely fast and asking him to stop and turn quickly.”

Even the defending champ, eighteen-year-old Charmayne James Rodman of California, acknowledged Rachel's prowess before the finals. “If anyone has a chance to break my times, it's her,” she said. “She's quite a cowgirl.”

“Charmayne was a wonderful mentor,” Rachael said in a recent interview. “She has natural grace, is a good hand, and is great with horses.”

Rachael came in ninth in the finals that year, but she continued to rack up wins and championships all over the country during her career. She was eight-time Montana Circuit Barrel Racing Champion, National High School All-Around Champion in 1994–1995, and while attending the University of Montana won the Collegiate Rodeo Championship in 1996. Rachael also won championships at the Calgary Stampede, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and the Laughlin River Stampede in Nevada in the late 1990s. In 2009 she ranked twenty-first nationally in WPRA standings and won the California circuit title that year.

Rachael has been at home on the back of a horse since an early age.

When she was adopted into the Myllymaki family at age six, her parents presented her with a pony. “It was scary because he looked so big, and I was afraid I'd fall off and get stomped on,” Rachael said in an interview. “But I found out fast was more exciting than slow. It was fun. My heart would start pounding, and I could finally race my mom.”

Her mom, Judy, was a barrel racer herself, and she began teaching the youngster. By age eight, Rachael had won the Western Montana Cowgirls Association junior division title. While Rachael was the second youngest to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in 1988, Judy became the oldest, at fifty-four, to qualify in 1998, holding that distinction until 2005.

“I wasn't afraid for her as far as her abilities were,” Judy said of the 1988 finals, “I was afraid the roar of the crowd might unsettle her, but she wasn't fazed by it.”

The mother-daughter team later produced a video,
Barrel Racing with Judy and Rachael
, showing the techniques and stations of the sport, and they both trained horses and riders on the family ranch in Arlee. Judy runs Myllymaki Barrel Horses with her husband Gene and still barrel races.

“It was a good time in Montana,” Rachael recalled. “The community was so supportive and showed me such kindness. If you put in the work, they're behind you.”

The thirty-six-year-old is also still racing on the professional circuit. “Every time I go through the gate, I go into it with ice in my veins, trying to win. I practice at home, and then I go in and put my best foot forward. That's all you can do—anyplace in your life.”

Rachael gives a lot of credit for her success to her horses. “It's a team effort. You're only as good as the horse you ride.” She said she is in the building-block stage right now, training colts. “I want to know my horse from top to bottom, every reaction when I push a button. I have a complete relationship with each one. They're my best friends and my business partners.”

She admits, “I'm probably more that way [friends with her horses] than others, but I know them and they know me, and I think they're willing to give that little extra for me. Inches make a difference when there's money on the line.”

Lately, she said she is looking for “the perfect indoor/outdoor horse—one that performs as well in indoor arenas as outdoor—that would give me an opportunity to win a world championship.” The next best thing would be to own two excellent horses, one for indoor and one for outdoor races.

Rachael has lived in California for the last several years and has invested in land and rental property to make a living. While her grandfather was still alive, she said, she bought cows and ran them on his ranch.

She also gives private lessons to young girls. “I like to lend a helping hand to girls who ask,” she said. Rachael sees future opportunities for women in rodeo. “I think we're headed for a big change. I think the PRCA and the WPRA will come together.”

She doesn't see an increase in women's rough-stock events, however. “There are a few out there, but not a big enough number.” Rachael never tried riding bucking stock, “not on purpose,” she said with a laugh. Her mother, Judy, did, however, when she was young, riding buffalo for entertainment between events at rodeos where her father was a stock contractor.

Her advice for young cowgirls: “Work hard. Ride like you want it, but act like you don't need it.” She said she wishes the age limit hadn't been changed to eighteen, but understands the legality issues. “I feel like a lot of girls could've superseded what I've done. There's a lot of talent and good horses out there. I would love to have seen them make their mark.”

“I'm happy to have been there when I was, though,” Rachael said.

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

—Z
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T
heresa Walter of Billings is Montana's current Barrel Racing Circuit Champion, a title she's held for the past three years.

For this barrel racer, as for many, it's a way of life. Theresa grew up on a farm and rode horses when she was little. She started rodeoing in the seventh grade. “I just wanted to do that since the first time I saw it,” she said in an interview. “I've always been competitive, always played sports.”

Her grandfather bought her a horse at the sale ring. Theresa started working with him immediately, and she was successful from the beginning. “I just love it, from the bottom up,” she said. She's trained every horse she's ridden and has even broke some. “I learn every day from the animal.”

And Theresa loves competition. “It's not so much the adrenaline as it is you and your animal, the time, effort, and training you've put in and the result of that,” she explained. “There's an element of self-satisfaction in it. I like to win. It's a tough, heartbreaking sport. I read once that there are coaches in every sport—except rodeo. We do have friends and family that support us, but it's all about you and the horse.

“Rodeo has become such a specialized sport,” she continued. “You have to learn all about the animal, about vet care, and feed and tack. The horse itself is an athlete, such an integral part of what we do.” And they are insured as such.

Theresa's current barrel horse, eleven-year-old Licorice, is a dream to compete with. She's trained the horse since it was two. “She is all attitude. She tries hard every time she goes in the arena. She is all heart!”

It is said in the barrel-racing circles that a rider gets only one perfect horse, but Theresa wants to prove the saying wrong and train another champion like Licorice.

Although she has never qualified for the NFR, Theresa has qualified five years for the PRCA's Ram National Circuit Finals in Oklahoma in April, three times as title winner and three times as average winner. (Once she won the year-end title and the average title in the same year.) “That is huge,” she said. “It's hard to do.” She explained there are twelve WPRA circuits in the United States, and two from each circuit—one overall winner and one who wins a three-run overall average—go to the finals.

Barrel racers qualify by the amount of money they win, not necessarily by their fastest times, since every arena is a different size and the barrel formation length varies.

Theresa has worked since 1993 as executive secretary of the Northern Rodeo Association, an eight-hundred-member regional organization that puts on thirty rodeos a year between June and August. Unfortunately, she said her job keeps her the busiest during the time she needs to be competing, but she still competes in twenty-five or thirty rodeos a year that qualify her for the circuit.

“I've done well with the limited number of rodeos,” she said. Theresa has been in the top fifty in the world for three years.

Despite the success of many Montana women in barrel racing through the years, none have gone on to become national champions.

Theresa would love to qualify for the NFR. “I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But it takes a lot of money for training, travel, and vehicles. And it's entirely up to the individual to finance herself.”