story by Ruth Nicolaus
Quinton Reule watched “Eight Seconds” so much that his brother hid the DVD so the family didn’t have to see it again.
The first-year member of the Colorado Junior High School Rodeo Association has seen the movie too many times to count, he says.
A resident of Montrose, Colo., Quinton competes in the team roping as a header and will add tie-down roping to his repertoire this spring.
For the heading, he rides a 21-year-old red roan named Tuff. Tuff is a good partner for Quinton. “He’s been quite a bit of help,” Quinton said. “He’s really good at keeping me on my spot, making sure I do the right thing, and staying where I need him to.” The horse has a good personality, too. “He’s sweet, he knows how to handle stuff, and does the hard work when it needs to be done.”
An eighth grade student at Columbine Middle School in Montrose, he really enjoys playing the trumpet in the band and studying agriculture, math and social studies, but is not crazy about reading and writing, and he has his reasons: “Well, I hate writing and I don’t like to read books, even though my parents say it’s good for me.”
He is a 4-H member and has shown pigs and a black Angus steer, winning fifth in the market show and ninth in showmanship with his steer.
For fun, he loves to hang out with his buddies, going four-wheeling or, in the summer, swimming in the ditches full of irrigation or rain water, which is cold, he reports.
Quinton also loves to hunt with his family and has gotten three deer in the past. This year, he had a tag for a bull elk but wasn’t able to harvest one. His best deer was a six by five buck, whose antlers hang in the shop.
The fourteen-year-old cowboy is an easy keeper when it comes to meals: he eats nearly anything but oatmeal, which he does not like. His mom makes a lot of his favorite meals, including homemade fettuccini alfredo, chicken fried steak and chicken piccata. His favorite drinks are Mountain Dew, his mom’s iced tea, orange, cranberry and pineapple juices; his favorite vegetable is all of them, but especially asparagus, salad, broccoli and cauliflower, and his favorite fruits include apples, pears, pineapples and strawberries. His favorite desserts are brownie sundaes and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
The best time he’s had on a trip was going to Las Vegas last year for the National Finals Rodeo. He and his family took in a round of the rodeo and attended the George Strait concert. George is the best, he says: “there’s no one who can beat him.”
Quinton enjoys the story of Lane Frost so much he did a biography on the bull rider, educating his classmates about the rodeo legend, of which no one in the class had heard of him.
He has a blue heeler named Storm who is two years old. Quinton hopes to train Storm to be a cow dog. The dog is partially deaf and is an “escape artist,” he says, finding his way out of the kennel even after every hole has been covered.
His parents, David and Tracy, enjoy their son. They love his sense of humor and his “tenacity,” David said. “When he wants something, he works hard for it.”
He and his dad are working on rebuilding a 1986 Nissan hardbody D21 pickup recovered from salvage. Quinton hopes to have it ready for his sixteenth birthday.
Older brother Blake, who is fifteen, rounds out the family.
