story by Ruth Nicolaus
Remi Wells is nearing the end of her Nebraska Junior High School Rodeo Association career.
The eighth grade cowgirl, a resident of Central City, Neb., competes in all six junior high events: breakaway, barrels, poles, goat tying, ribbon roping (as a runner for Logan Lindsley) and team roping (as the heeler for Emerson McIntyre.)
For her events, she has two main horses. Coon, an eight-year-old mare, is her barrels and poles horse. A new addition to the Wells’ barn, the mare is calm but goofy and loves to play with the other horses in the pen.
Flynn, a red roan gelding, is her second horse and her choice for the breakaway, goat tying and team roping. He’s an all-around horse who can be ridden for the barrels and poles, although Remi doesn’t usually ride him for those events. He is hyper, yet calm at times. When he goes through the gate at rodeos, he likes to prance sideways “like a crazy barrel horse,” Remi said. He also has a goofy side; he likes to pick up the feed tubs hooked onto the fence and drop them.
A student at Central City Middle School, Remi enjoys math class but is not a fan of studying punctuation in English class. Her favorite thing is hanging with friends. Her friends don’t rodeo, so she doesn’t get to see them much on weekends during the rodeo season, or through the summer.
She plays school and club basketball and is involved in FFA. She is also on the honor roll. In 4-H, she used to show sheep but now shows horses in the trail, speed and roping events.
The best meals her mom makes are beef and noodles and potato-bacon soup. She loves watermelon and grilled green beans, and to wash it all down, prefers cream soda. Her favorite dessert is chocolate cake, with or without frosting.
The most fun Remi has had on a trip was going to Arizona over Christmas break. She team roped and breakaway roped, and for fun, they drove ATVs in the mountains and visited the Christmas lights at the Phoenix Zoo.
The Wells household has three dogs: a red heeler named Bruno, a mini Australian shepherd named Gus, and a dachshund named Louie, who claims Remi as “his person.” Louie often sleeps in Remi’s room and even has a ramp to her bed, because he’s too short to jump onto it.
Her parents, Kara and Troy, love their daughter. “She is passionate” about rodeo, Kara said. “It is amazing to watch her put the time and effort into it to be successful.” Remi’s love of the sport began when she was young. At a rodeo, she told her mother, ‘this is my thing.’ “She’s never wavered from that,” Kara said. “She’s been consistent. She has no problem putting in the hard work, whether it’s twenty degrees or 100 degrees outside.”
Remi finished the 2021-2022 Nebraska Junior High association as champion team roper (with Emerson); reserve champion in the breakaway, and fifth in the goat tying. At the National Junior High Finals in Des Moines in 2021, she finished seventh in the world in the breakaway; she and Emerson finished 24th in the world in the team roping.
She loved her time at Nationals last June. One of her favorite things was the water slide the Nebraska junior high kids played on. It was actually a tarp and a garden hose, with some Dawn dish soap to make it slippery. “After a little bit it turned into more of a mudslide than a waterslide,” she said. “That was a highlight.”
When she grows up, she’d like to be an equine chiropractor. She loves to see the relief her horses get when the chiropractor works on them, and she enjoys learning about horses’ anatomy.
She also competes in the Little Britches Rodeo Association and qualified for the 2021 Finals in all seven events. She finished the 2020-2021 Little Britches season fifth in the world in the team roping with Harley Ann Baas.
Remi has an older brother, Ruger, who is a freshman in college.
