story by Ruth Nicolaus
This spring, Morgan Darnell has been in the branding pen a lot.The Gordon, Neb. cowgirl, a member of the Nebraska High School Rodeo Association, helps with her family’s branding and with the neighbors’ as well. Usually she’s roping and dragging calves, but at her grandparents’ branding, she’s running a branding iron alongside her grandpa.
The family uses propane to heat the irons, putting the branding “fires” in the middle and dragging calves on both sides. She also runs a vaccination gun when needed, and for their branding, they ran 350 calves through in a morning.
Roping in the branding pen is nothing like roping in the arena, says the breakaway and team roper. The branding pen is more relaxed and if you miss, people laugh and joke about it. In the arena, if you miss, “you try to figure out what you did wrong so you don’t do it on the next one,” Morgan said. “Roping in the arena takes a lot more technique and you have to do a lot of things correctly.”
But one of the best parts of branding is the meal afterwards, and Morgan heads straight for the mashed potatoes. She loves any kind of mashed potatoes, even instant. For her grandparents’ branding, she helped her grandma make the potatoes.
She is a 2018 graduate of Gordon-Rushville High School, where she had a 4.0 grade point average and was valedictorian of her class. Being tops in the class does have its disadvantage: “I wasn’t really excited to give a speech for graduation,” she said. She was president of her school’s FFA chapter and her ag demonstration team earned sixth place at state. She served as secretary of her school’s chapter of the National Honor Society and was a member of student council.
When she was 14 years old, Morgan was diagnosed with osteochondritis dissecans, also known as OCD bone disease. It affected her right knee, and she has had four surgeries to correct it. Then, her sophomore year of high school, Morgan was diagnosed with hip dysplasia, which took three more surgeries to correct, including a total hip reconstruction.
For the breakaway roping, she rides a 13-year-old sorrel named Jesse. The mare was supposed to be a finished tie-down horse “but had a lot of quirks we worked out,” she said. For the heeling (she heels for Clayton Symons), she rides a six-year-old paint horse named Sis. Sis was her third string horse last year until a mountain lion ran two of her horses through fences last year, causing them to get cut up. She and Sis clicked, and now Sis is her primary horse.
This fall, Morgan will attend Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyo., where she will graduate in five semesters with a physical therapy assistant degree. Then she has two choices: either attend physical therapy school or get a job as an assistant and work her way through her schooling. As of now, she’s leaning towards the second choice.
For fun, she and her family love playing card games like pitch, hearts, and cribbage.
She has qualified for state finals in Hastings the past four years. She has an older brother, Cody, who is in college. She is the daughter of Buddy and Stacey Darnell.
