Junior & High School Rodeo

We had a busy year of rodeo having 3 competitors. Lucy was in junior high rodeo competing in goat tying and pole bending and sometimes barrel racing.  Jill and Hanna competed in high school rodeo in goat tying, breakaway roping and team roping. Goat  tying is by far our best event.

After the fall and spring rodeos were finished, Lucy, Jill and Hanna all qualified for provincials in goat tying and Hanna qualified in breakaway roping.  We decided not to take Lucy to provincials this year since it was her first year and it was also the same weekend as Jill's graduation banquet.

We took Jill and Hanna on a journey to Olds, Alberta to the high school provincials.  We loved having the rodeo in central Alberta (not northern Alberta).  Leighton (Austin's youngest brother) was going to school in Olds when he was killed in a car accident in 1997- so Olds has a meaningful place in our hearts.  I went jogging each morning around the Olds campus and saw the buildings where Leighton took his classes.

Back to the rodeo, the finals didn't go as good as we hoped. Hanna didn't have good luck in breakaway.  The goat were huge and crazy.  The first day Hanna's goat got up and Jill's goat wrapped around her legs twice before she tied it.  The second day Hanna was fast time in goat tying and got to ride the victory lap and earned a buckle for winning the event that day. Her time of 7.3 ended up to be the fastest goat time of the weekend.  Jill's goat got up on the second day, (stinking goat had gotten up every time he was tied so far). On the third day, Jill fell backwards as she was flanking the goat and ended up to be like 12 seconds or so.  Hanna had Jill's stupid second day goat, and she was the only one to get that goat to stay tied during the weekend with a 9.0 second run.

Jill's good news of the weekend was that she earned a merit scholarship from high school rodeo of $1000 US.  Three kids from each district were chosen for the award.

We got all dressed up on the second night of the finals to go to the graduation banquet.  All of the grads wear their grad dresses/suits and they do a grand march as each person's name is called and they tell what they are going to do next year.  It is fun to see all of the cowgirls magically change from dusty rodeo clothes to fancy dresses with their hair and make-up done.  Jill looked beautiful in her grad dress. It was a fun banquet.  After dinner and a guest speaker, they had a hypnotist come for entertainment.  It was amazing and kind of freaky what a hypnotist can do to the mind.  It was really funny to watch.

Eddie Longeway asked Hanna to be his date to the banquet.  Eddie has been texting Hanna since the fall rodeos.  It was a funny date.  We drove her to the banquet.  She sat at a table with his friends until he came in with the rest of the grads.  They ate dinner.  Then Eddie volunteered to be hypnotized and was on the stage for over 2 hours.  Then we took Hanna back to our hotel with us because it was almost midnight and they had the final day of rodeo the next day.