story by Lily Weinacht
“I grew up around rodeo, and it’s just what I live and breathe. I budget my money around wanting to go rope, and that’s what we managed to do this summer,” says Jessie Calkins. The 25-year-old breakaway and team roper is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado, and lately of Canyon, Texas, but she’s spent the summer rodeoing in the Northeast and loved every moment of it.
Jessie’s boyfriend, Kyle Letzelter, is a team roper in the APRA. They met at a roping in Texas several years ago, and Kyle invited Jessie to rodeo with him in his region for the summer. “It’s been a blast,” says Jessie, who’s sitting fifth in the APRA breakaway roping standings. She’s an ER nurse in Amarillo, and was able to take the summer off to rodeo. “I’ve mostly been in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and some in New Mexico, so it’s been fun seeing new places up here. I team rope mainly back home doing World Series ropings with my family and all-girl team ropings, and I breakaway rope in jackpots and rodeos. Up here I’m just focusing on breakaway for a change. The arenas seem to be narrower up here than the ones we compete in back home, so it’s been fun seeing the different arenas. In the APRA there’s only a few stock contractors, and it’s been fun keeping track of which calves we’re roping. It’s definitely a different game in a completely new place with new competitors and whole new dynamics, so that’s been one of my biggest challenges is my mental game.”
Jessie and her older brother are the third generation in their family to rope. She went to the NJHFR and qualified for the Texas High School Finals growing up, then pursued roping when she college rodeoed for Texas A&M University. An avid goat tyer and breakaway roper through high school, she also team roped and ran poles and barrels, and has ridden the same roping horse, Pinky, since fifth grade. The gelding carried Jessie to WPRA Rookie Heeler of the Year in 2014. “Pinky’s 20, and I do still heel on him some. This is the first year I’ve hauled him hard just breakaway roping and amateur rodeoing, and I’m glad to do it now before he gets too old for me to take him. He’s definitely old faithful.”
When they’re not roping, Jessie and Kyle are at the barn training horses. Kyle trains horses and ropes for a living, and Jessie took on a 5-year-old project horse for the summer. “I have to give a lot of credit to Kyle for pushing me, because I’ve done a lot of rodeoing but never felt like I had the means to really go, and he’s pushed me to set this goal. He truly believed I could be competitive up here going to new places, and that I had a good chance of making the APRA and IPRA finals. And his grandparents Andy and Susan Beadnell have been so gracious. We’ve been staying at their place for the summer—Kyle works for his grandfather in the summer. I look up to and learned most of what I know from my mom and dad, Craig Calkins and Ruth Alexander, and my brother, Jason Calkins. We lived just down the road from Kevin and Ember Stewart—Kevin’s been to the NFR 11 times and Ember has been there—and I spent a lot of summers roping with them. I have to give a lot of credit to Kevin with the heeling because I worked a lot with him.”
Jessie and Kyle are continuing on their goals of qualifying for the APRA and IPRA finals this season, while another of Jessie’s goals is qualifying for the WSTR Finale in Las Vegas someday. “I’ll get back into WPRA events back home as well, and they added breakaway to The American, so one of my new biggest goals is to qualify for The American.”
