By Lily Weinacht
Keaton Benedick finished the 2015 KJRA season with a bang, covering both his steers for the first time that year. The eight second buzzer had never sounded so sweet to the 13-year-old steer rider from Newton, Kan. Since then, Keaton has covered every steer he’s put his bull rope on, bringing home several checks while competing in the OKYRA winter series. He’ll start his second season with the KJRA in April. “The fun we have rodeoing is what keeps me going, and all the people that come,” Keaton explains. “I’ve made a lot of friends, and two of my closest friends compete in the steer riding with me.”
The second generation of his family to lower himself into the chutes, Keaton spent several years watching the PBR on TV before he started competing. He and his family also help out with a local saddle club, but when Keaton found out a KJRA rodeo was coming to his hometown of Newton, he wanted to give it a go. “We’ve always taken Keaton to the Bull Blowouts, and when he told us he wanted to try steer riding, we as parents didn’t think it would take,” says Erin Pryor, Keaton’s mom. “Now he won’t stop – he’s on a winning streak!”
Coached by his step-dad, Tave Pryor, who rode bulls in high school, Keaton works on building his strength at home, and he hopes to have several head of practice steers to ride this spring. “For now, I just go to the rodeos and hope for the best!” he says. “I lift weights at home and go running sometimes.” Keaton also looks up to Lane Frost, whom he’s come to admire from his well-worn copy of the movie Eight Seconds. If he could spend a day with any rodeo athlete, however, Keaton would choose JB Mauney. “I’d ask him what he does to ride well, and when he started learning to ride bulls.”
Keaton and his family make their home outside of Newton. He has two older sisters, Savannah and Aspen, as well as a younger brother, Tevin, and a younger sister, Pyper. Aspen, a barrel racer, is the only other member of the family that rodeos, but the entire family comes to form Keaton’s cheering section at his events. Keaton’s mom has several horses that the family takes trail riding on occasion, though Keaton admits that he prefers riding something that bucks. The family also has a nine-month-old miniature mule which they plan on using in local saddle clubs in the future.
A seventh grader at Chisholm Middle School, Keaton is an Honor Roll student. “My favorite subject is social studies,” he says. “We just finished the history of Kansas, and now we’re working on geography.” After school, Keaton often walks to his cousins’ house, who live in town, spending time with them before heading home to finish his homework and help care for animals. “I have two friends in the KJRA who both do steer riding with me, but the rest of my friends don’t rodeo,” Keaton explains. “When we hang out, we’ll go to a trampoline park, or have air soft gun wars.”
What Keaton is most interested in, however, is rodeo. He finishes the OKYRA series in mid March, and plans to make the upcoming KJRA season his best yet. “I want to go on to high school rodeo in a few years,” he concludes. “And then I’d like to make it to the PBR and keep going as far as I can go!”
