above: Dave Sweiven in 1961 – courtesy Dave Sweiven
story by Ruth Niclaus
Dave Sweiven enjoyed his days of rodeo. He didn’t make a career out of it, and he didn’t rodeo much past college, but they were good days.
The Graham, Texas cowboy grew up south of Houston, one of three children of Bud and Kathleen Sweiven, in a family that never rodeoed, but he got tuned into the sport by a high school buddy. “We’d ride anything at his house, dairy cows, anything that had hair on it, just for the heck of it.” The buddy encouraged him to get on a bareback horse at a high school rodeo in Alvin, Texas. The first year in Alvin, Dave covered the horse, the second year he won second, and the third year, he won first. “That was bad because it got me hooked,” he laughs.
He not only rode barebacks but bulls and occasionally even bulldogged in high school. In his senior year of high school, Dave won the all-round at the high school rodeo in Alice, Texas, by placing fourth in the steer wrestling and first in the bareback riding. “There was a bunch of good cowboys from that area nipping on my heels,” he remembers.
After graduation from San Jacinto High School in 1958, he earned a rodeo scholarship to Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde. After two years at Uvalde, he transferred to Arizona State and competed on the college rodeo team there for another year.
Dave followed in his dad’s footsteps as an engineer, graduating from Arizona State with a construction engineer degree. He worked for a contractor in El Paso and spent two years in Las Cruces, N.M. on the job-site.
His rodeo days were nearly over, but on a whim, he got into the bareback riding while visiting an old rodeo buddy in Durango, Colo. in 1964. His buddy Wayne Schaat lent him jeans, spurs and a riggin’. “I made it two jumps,” Dave says. “I bucked straight up into the air and it felt like 100 feet up, and came down hard, and I mean hard. That must be my final round,” he told himself.
He and his buddies knew they probably wouldn’t continue to rodeo after college. “We loved it, but our brains kicked in and said, you’d better get in gear, boy” and make a living.
Dave worked as a construction engineer and also worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife as a construction inspector. He retired five years ago at the age of seventy.
He and his wife Beth have been married for 49 years. “I didn’t think I’d make it two years,” he jokes. They have a daughter, Shaena Sweiven, and two granddaughters, Vivika and Zophia, who live in Olympia, Washington.
Rodeo fit his personality. “I played football and basketball in high school. But every time I went to a rodeo, I felt better because I was self-reliant and dependent on myself.” Rodeo teaches self-reliance. “If you can get it done, you can rodeo.”
