“He was extremely fast from the horse to the calf, he was well mounted, and he was a competitor. He wanted to beat you and still be good friends while doing it.” Roy Rodriguez let his actions speak louder than his words. Whether it was in the rodeo arena, on…
“Something about me never wanted to work for somebody else,” says Lavonna “Shorty” Koger. The owner of world-famous Shorty’s Caboy Hattery in Oklahoma City, she forged the path of becoming one of the best-loved Western hatters in the country—one of few women to do so. Before Shorty’s skilled hands knew…
C.R. Hall didn’t let anything get in the way of his dream of being a rodeo cowboy. Including the color of his skin. The black bareback rider and steer wrestler was raised in New York City and never got on a horse till his high school years. Then, through hard…
Shawn Davis has spent his life in the western or equine business with his biggest impact being in the sport of professional rodeo and specifically the National Finals Rodeo. Born Dec. 7, 1940, in Butte, Montana, Davis bought his RCA card in 1962 (RCA became the PRCA in 1975) and…
LaTonne Sewalt remembers the first barrel race she was in at Comanche, Texas. She was 9 years old and was riding her horse, Little Joe, just for fun, on a trick-riding saddle her folks had given her. She wasn’t even in western clothes, she was wearing shorts! The barrel race…
As a young girl, Sherry Price Combs Johnson spent her days on horseback, riding bareback, playing “cowboys and Indians” or “bad guys,” with her bb gun on her family’s ranch near Addington, Oklahoma. Little did she know the hours spent on horseback would spill over into thousands of hours in…
As a kid, all Bob Hagel wanted to do was be horseback. The saddle bronc rider, now a resident of Mobridge, S.D., was born on Feb. 25, 1935 and grew up in Ft. Pierre, riding horses at his maternal uncle’s ranch every minute he wasn’t in school. When he was…
“I’m pretty talkative and used to edit a magazine, so it just made sense to write a book,” said Roy Lilley, the 90 year old rough stock rider from Fort Collins, Colorado, who wrote a 567 page memoir called Just As I Am. The book took three years to complete.…
For the first time in history, three generations of one family will qualify for the National Finals Steer Roping, held in Amarillo, Texas, Nov. 19 – 21. Steer roping is the only Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) final event not held at the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas,…
If the boys could do it, Jan Youren was there to prove that girls could do it, too. The Idaho woman was a roughstock cowgirl for nearly all of her life. Born in 1943 as the second oldest child of Sterling and Madelyn Alley, the family lived on a farm…
Bill Skavdahl has gotten plenty of adrenaline rushes in his life. Some of them were ones he planned on, like when he rode bulls and bulldogged, and some were unpleasant ones, like when his helicopter was shot down while serving in the Army Air Corps in Vietnam in 1968. The…
Bob Click was never a threat to any big-name cowboys, but he loved to compete. “Jim Shoulders never lost any sleep over me,” Bob quipped, “although I knew him personally and liked him.” Born the son of O.B. and Thelma Click, on the family farm near Warren, Oregon, just south…
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