story by Lily Weinacht
Tyler Hintz, the 2017 Miss South Dakota High School Rodeo Queen, won her first title when she was 8. The 18-year-old from Timber Lake, South Dakota, who delivered the game ball for Augustana University’s football game last fall, held several more titles over the years before setting her sight on Miss SDHRA in 2016. She was first runner-up that year and proceeded to serve as Miss Ashley Rodeo and River Region High School Rodeo Queen before achieving her current title. “All those wins have helped shape me, and each title has made me a better queen for the next one, and a better person,” says Tyler. “What I learned the most was when I lost. In 2015 I ran for Junior Miss Rodeo South Dakota and I was dead last. I was devastated. It taught me to start studying more, and ever since then, I’ve won high points in my written tests.”
Tyler’s hard work also served her well when she finished third runner-up in the 2017 NHSRA Rodeo Queen Contest, but she credits her family in particular with building the rodeo tradition that inspired her to be an ambassador for the sport. “One of the people who inspires me is my grandfather, Dennis Hintz. He pro rodeoed quite a bit and also competed in the SDRA and won seven saddles in the bareback riding. One of our family traditions is to always build our horses from the ground up. While he was alive, my grandfather was a very big part of my life. As long as he could, he continued to rope and ride and keep the rodeo legacy in the family alive. My mother, Marty Hintz, gave up her rodeo queen career for me. She competed for Sitting Bull Stampede and won that. I came along a couple of years after that, and if she hadn’t given up queening, she probably would have gone on to be Miss Rodeo South Dakota. I want to finish what she started and hopefully one day win Miss Rodeo South Dakota.”
Along with representing the SDHSRA, Tyler continues to compete in barrel racing and pole bending, and in the past, she entered goat tying and breakaway roping. She’s won six saddles thus far and often travels to rodeos with her mom, who is a 4-H extension officer, or her grandmother Judy Hintz, who rodeoed when she was a teenager. Tyler does all of her events and queening on Sonny, a 15-year-old quarter horse, who qualified her for state her freshman and sophomore years in barrels and poles. Tyler’s grandfather left the horse to her, and she and Sonny took third in horsemanship at the NHSFR. Tyler shares Sonny with her 12-year-old sister, Tobi, who competes on him in junior high rodeos, and their 7-year-old sister, Tara, enjoys riding as well. Dennis’s Cowboy, named after her grandfather, is Tyler’s up-and-coming barrel and queen horse. The 6-year-old gelding is bred for cutting and reining, and with the help of her aunt Jody Hintz, Tyler is training him for barrels.
A recent graduate of Timber Lake High School, Tyler will be attending Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, this fall. She’s double majoring in English education and psychology with a minor in coaching for basketball. “During college I want to do a lot of research in psychology in the classroom and what teaching styles are most effective—compare e-learning to class learning. Being in a small school, I get to see the bond teachers have with kids. I want to go somewhere where they really need someone to work with kids and show them there’s more to life than what they believe.”
Tyler estimates she spent a total of two months away from home last summer for rodeoing, and she’s prepared to do the same and more this year, including competing in the first-ever Miss Black Hills Roundup Queen Pageant in June. “No matter where I go, I’m surrounded by queen friends and rodeo friends, and it’s like my own community. I’m not really gone from home, I’m just driving to my next home with friends,” she finishes. “I love rodeo and representing it, and giving a voice to it.”
