Meet the Member

Mesa Jo Meadows

Mesa Jo and Dallas at NLBRA

Mesa Jo Meadows lives at the arena or the racetrack all summer long. The 12-year-old from Jones, Okla. has been an avid Little Britches competitor for two years now. She has been rodeoing since she was two, and spends her summers practicing, rodeoing, or watching the horse races sanctioned by the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Association (OQHRA). Mesa Jo’s mom, Krissy Bamberg, does marketing and event planning for the OQHRA. “We’re really excited for the NLBFR this year, because there’s a bunch of racetrack kids from the OQHRA that are going to Nationals,” says Krissy. “Many of the parents of these kids grew up racing on the racetrack in Pueblo.”
The NLBFR is hands down Mesa Jo’s favorite rodeo. She qualified in barrel racing and pole bending, but also competes in goat tying. At the 2013 finals, Mesa Jo finished in the top 30 in pole bending, but her goal this year is to make it to the short go. She leads quite the social life in Little Britches, meeting old friends or making new ones at every rodeo. A group of families caravanned with the Meadows family to the NLBFR last year. Mesa Jo and her friends passed the ten hour drive playing “musical vehicles”, moving from one vehicle to another whenever they made stops. One of the most anticipated events outside of the rodeo, however, is the famous water fight. Last year, Mesa Jo and her family didn’t know to come with water guns, but this year they are coming with their personal water gun cache.
The Meadows family lives a few miles outside of Jones. Mesa Jo has several brothers and sisters. Sierra (15) also competes in Little Britches and is on the Top Hand team. Tate (3) is their adopted brother, and Sierra and Mesa Jo plan to have him competing in a year or two. Beau (4) and Finley (1) are their brother and sister on their dad’s side, and they see each other often. In addition to their ten horses, they also have two miniature donkeys, five dogs, two goats, and 11 cats. Every morning, Mesa Jo and Sierra get up at seven to care for the animals. Sierra is training several younger horses, so Mesa Jo rides her older horses and keeps them in shape while also keeping up with her own rodeo horse, Bullet. The cowgirl and her sorrel and white Paint have been together for two years. Running barrels is one of their favorite things to do together. The two Meadows sisters practice nearly every day in the summer, sometimes with the help of their step-dad, Brant, who used to compete in roughstock. Their mom, Krissy, competed in high school rodeo, but today she devotes much of her time to being a mom, running the house, homeschooling her kids, pulling the roping dummy with the four-wheeler, and helping groom and saddle horses.

Sierra, Tate and Mesa Jo

If she’s not on horseback, Mesa Jo enjoys watching movies, and her current favorite TV show is 19 Kids and Counting. It’s more likely that she’s at a rodeo, however, as she also competes in the Heart of Oklahoma Youth Rodeo Association and Edmond Junior Rodeos. Mesa Jo hardly ever competes in anything less than her craziest outfit. She is known around Little Britches for her cheetah or tie-dye jeans, striped socks, and even on occasion, a tie-dye wig. Her horse Bullet is equally decked out in flashy boots.
Mesa Jo plans to rodeo through high school and beyond, although one of her current goals is to make the Little Britches Top Hand team this year. She finishes, “When I grow up, I want to be a zoologist. I’m definitely an animal lover!”