story by Lindsay King
Nicole Rawlings from Middlebury, Indiana, is not from a traditional rodeo family and neither is her husband, Luke. “I grew up on a 40-acre farm where my family grew a lot of hay and owned a small trucking company. For me to get the rodeo bug was completely out of the blue,” said the MSRA barrel racer. Nicole’s parents, John Laughlin and Susan Klemm, were always supportive of her rodeo career, hauling her to clinics and rodeos all over the state. “It is much different when your parents did not do the rodeo thing. My dad did everything he could to give me a good start.”
Her dad continues to support Nicole in rodeo today. “He will help me work horses when I cannot do it alone but he mainly likes to trail ride. That is what he bought the horses for when we first moved to the farm when I was two. Somehow that turned into rodeo for me.” Nicole works as a dispatcher for her dad’s trucking company, Rusty Wheel Acres. Luke also works for the family company. “Both of us working for my dad offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to rodeo but it can be stressful being a dispatcher.”
Luke rode bulls for almost ten years ultimately leading him to Nicole. Indiana High School Rodeos were too far south for Nicole to compete in so she went to IPRA and MSRA events instead. “We met at an open rodeo when we were 18 and started dating after that. We began traveling to rodeos together.” Married for the past 11 years, they have two kids: Coulter, 11, and Cooper, 6. “Luke has since quit riding bulls so now he is a team roper and I continue to barrel race. Coulter rides quite a bit and has started team roping. Cooper could not care less about competing though. He likes to play and then trail ride every once in awhile.”
Nicole has not competed as much as she would have liked in the past few years but is starting to go more consistently now. “I have gone to a fair amount of MSRA and Super Kicker rodeos this year. A lot of the same people go to both of those so it is like a family reunion at every rodeo. There is a lot of comradery that goes along with that, I love that aspect of rodeo in the MSRA.” The pick-up men have left quite the impression on Coulter in the past year. “He is fascinated by them, that is what he says he wants to do. The pick-up men have been incredibly nice to him this year, that is what is so neat about rodeo.”
Help from fellow MSRA and IPRA competitor, Tammye MacKenzie, when Nicole was growing up inspires her everyday to help others as much as she can. “I met her when I was 12 and I could always go to her for my random questions and she never turned me down. We have grown to become friends as I have gotten older. Now my kids call her grandma Tammye.” With a lending hand always extended in rodeo, Nicole knows no strangers. “I always try to help people because I know the help I got from almost complete strangers was instrumental to me when I was young. It is neat to talk to people who have grown up in rodeo and can be mentors for me even though there is nothing in it for them.” Nicole is always looking for ways to improve her barrel racing. “Something I would tell my younger self would be to learn everything I possible could. There were a few years where I felt like I was stuck until I went to a clinic or read a new book and the light bulb went off. That is something I want to always strive for in rodeo: to never stop learning.”
