story by Siri Stevens
Hanna Gallegos competes in breakaway, barrels, and poles. Her favorite is barrel racing. “I’ve spent the most time on it,” said the 17-year-old soon to be senior at Fremont High School. Hanna lives in Hooper, Utah with her older sister, Bailey, and her mom and dad Vickie and Nate. Hanna got her start in rodeo very young. “I had a little black pony I started on. Moonlight and I rode around while my sister competed,” she said. She inherited Bailey’s old horse, Indian, and started competing on him. “I rode him for four years,” said Hanna, “and then he got old and passed away.” Now she rides three different horses, a barrel horse, a pole horse that she started, and a mare that she breakaway ropes on. The family has seven horses total; a baby and her momma, and the other two are her parent’s horses. “They go on trail rides.”
Hanna says the hardest thing about training horses is progressing into getting better and getting them to the level of competing. “My dad helps me a lot – he pulls the dummy and is my traveling partner, he takes me to all my rodeos.” Her dad is also her farrier, which Hanna is very grateful for. “If I lose a shoe, he puts it on and I never have to worry about a horse coming up lame.” She is headed to the finals this week in barrels she is 57th, breakaway she is 63rd, and she didn’t make it in pole bending this year. “My horse is really young and we couldn’t keep a clean pattern.” The hardest part of rodeo for Hannah is staying focused. “It’s hard to keep your mind prepared and even after a bad run, you have to take it all in and keep working on it, knowing that it will work out at one point.”
Dixie State or Weber State is where she’s heading to college and hopes to get a degree in Business Management. “My grandma, Chuck and Aunt Paula own their own business and have been great role models. I would love to learn all I can from them and hopefully someday I would like to take over for them. Grandma is very excited to have a granddaughter interested in business.” She has always had high honors in school, and enjoys learning new things and the social aspect of school, but if given an option, “I love riding my horses all day long best.” Hanna will spend the summer working for her grandma and Aunt Paula and working on her horses. I have learned a lot in the summers riding with Roni Hennis at Broken H Ranch and “On weekends with Jim & Tiffany Montgomery.”
Her motto for rodeo is pretty simple: Always stay humble after a run and never lose motivation after a bad run …
