At this point, I have come to terms that I do have to go back to school for my inevitable senior year of college. Anxiety bubbles up every time someone asks me what am I going to do after school. I usually just push through and laugh as I say I have nine more months to figure it out. I have mixed feelings about this upcoming year but there is one thing that is my constant at school. Rodeo. This sport has helped me grow so much as a person.
The irony that my constant is rodeo, a sport that is an equation that is built with as many variables as your calculus homework, is not lost on me. Rodeo is my passion. It is a thrill that I can’t get enough of. When I am roping a two-ish second run, it gives me such a high, I just can’t wait to back my horse into the box again.
I really started roping when I was in fifth grade. It was after a horse show and some older kids came to the arena with cattle to rope. Dad talked me into trying it so I borrow a rope, backed my old girl Kay into the box and took the steer. By some miraculous way I caught and I have been hooked since. As my summer draws to a close, I am looking forward to the memories I will make practicing, traveling and competing with my teammates.
Through high school and into college I struggled mentally with my roping. I was always so hard on myself and never really believed in myself. I could catch every calf I ran in practice but it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if I missed five calves at the rodeos. I have really worked on not caring. I know it sounds weird that I need to not care about my self-proclaimed passion, but it was because I cared too much. I would let that miss fester up and it would run over into my next run and it just snowballed.
The college rodeo experience is quite a bit different than what I was used to. I always went home or to a hotel during the high school rodeos. We didn’t have a trailer to stay in so I didn’t have a lot of social time because I was there to rope. In college, we are there for two days but there is only one guaranteed run in your events. It gives you down time to hang out and bond with your friends and I think it helped to make a huge difference in my overall competitiveness, but also in my social life at school.
I am a major introvert. It isn’t crippling by any means, but I am pretty comfortable with my small amount of friends. Rodeo is my comfort zone but it helps me step out of it as well. It has instilled in me a passion for traveling. I went to England, which I’m not sure I could have without confidence I gained in rodeo. It has also made me more sociable. I give rodeo some credit for who I am today.
