Meet the Member Diane Axmann

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Diane Axmann in Johnstown, NE - Suze’s Photography

Meet the Member Diane Axmann

story by Lily Weinacht

Diane Axmann from Loup City, Nebraska, is sitting high in the NSRA barrel racing standings. The 51-year-old qualified for the NSRA finals for the first time in 2004, several years after she started rodeoing. “I haven’t been doing it all my life like most of the girls competing. In college, I did track and I played sports in high school. I always had horses, and when I was thirty-five, I got a mare off the racetrack that was a thoroughbred and I got into a little cutting.” As much as she enjoyed cutting, it was expensive, and Diane was intrigued when she saw how much a local barrel racer won rodeoing. “Barrel racing was a little more feasible, and it was that need for speed. You have to be a little athletic yourself to ride these horses, and that adrenaline rush you get is a lot of fun.”
Diane now competes in the NSRA, M-SRA, KPRA, and PRCA Prairie Circuit, but she started out going to jackpots and has always trained her horses herself. “I learned hard, and it took longer to get where I am with them at the rodeo level, but that’s part of the challenge. It’s fun when it all comes together and you’re the one who trained them. Somebody that encouraged me to go from jackpots to rodeos is the gal I buy a lot of my horses from, Carrie Howard Byam. She lives in Oklahoma now, but I still call her and ask for opinions. She was the person that pushed me to go the most, and she could see that rodeo would be a good direction for me,” says Diane. “I like the atmosphere of rodeoing and the competition of it, and the loud music and noise and ground conditions.”
This season, Diane is running two geldings, Legit, 9, by Judy Gracey’s stud who is a son of Frenchmans Guy, and Newt, 8, a cow bred horse by Bill White’s stud in Ashby, Nebraska. “When I got Legit, he had some issues and it took time to get him calmed down. I trained him myself, and Newt came from Adams Feedyard. He’s a nice horse I found out had some speed. He ran at some rodeos last year and he’s showing a lot of promise.” The mare Diane was riding previously won her nearly $40,000 between amateur and pro rodeos, along with the year-end saddle in 2012 in the M-SRA. “She got hurt, and I took her to Littleton, Colorado, for an MRI and found out it was in her foot. I bred her to Judy Gracey’s palomino stud, and I’ll probably breed her to him again because I really liked the baby. When you breed a mare that’s won some money, you have a pretty good chance of getting something good out of it.”
When she’s not on horseback, Diane helps her husband, John Obermiller, with farming. “I help in the spring with planting and hauling seed and in the fall with harvest, and John has picked up more custom harvesting too. He encourages me to go and wants me to do this (rodeo).” John competed in rodeo in the 1970s, and he’s recently trained one of Diane’s barrel horses to pull their buggy, which he’s driven at a wedding and several parades. They also enjoy traveling to areas like Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Black Hills in South Dakota, and visiting the museums in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
Diane’s main focus this summer is seasoning her two horses and exposing them to larger pens, especially since she’d like to qualify for the Prairie Circuit Finals in the future. “I hope by the end of the summer I can make one of the finals between the NSRA, Mid-States, and KPRA,” she finishes. “I hauled Newt to nine rodeos last year and he placed in four of them, and it would be really nice to make all three of those finals.”

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Meet the Member Diane Axmann

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Nebraska State Rodeo Association (NSRA)