story by Siri Stevens
Lance LaBove is a 16 year old Junior at St Louis in Bell City, Louisiana, and spends his time hanging out with friends, rodeoing, and working. He competes in team roping, cutting, and calf roping. He likes team roping best. “It’s a good environment and good people.” Lance has been rodeoing since his freshman year, before that he was wrestling. “You learn about respect and self control,” he said of wrestling. “And all the muscles I built up from wrestling helps out in team roping and rodeo.”
Although he’s been on a horse his whole life due to the ranch he lives on, the family just started competing a few years ago, when his youngest sister got old enough and wanted to compete. “My whole family rodeos, so it was just natural for us to do it.” Lance has two younger sisters, Veronica and Quincy (featured in the LJH pages) that compete as well, but he doesn’t practice with them. “I practice every day. I practice cutting on Thursdays and the rest of my events the other four days.” He added cutting because his family has cutting horses. “We’ve always ridden horses that watched a cow. We have 200 head of cows and we do a lot of pairing up in the pen.”
When he completes high school, Lance plans to go to McNeese State University and become a chemical engineer. “I’m taking chemistry right now, and it’s pretty interesting. It’s pretty cool.” He plans to compete in rodeo as well, following in his great grandfathers footsteps – Mr. Lawrence Arceneaux was one of the first members of the McNeese State University rodeo team. He steer wrestled and rode bulls. “I’m still going to compete in team roping, but I want to become a chemical engineer so I have enough money to rodeo.”
When he has time, he likes to go duck hunting and works as a guide in Klondike, taking people out on duck hunts. He shared one of his favorite duck recipes. “You cut the breast out, put a jalapeno petter with cream cheese on it, wrap in bacon, and secure with a toothpick. Put it in the barbeque pit until it’s right.”
His hopes this year is to make it to the National High School Finals. “I was just a few points from making it last year.”
