Rope 'N Wranglers
Rodeo dreamers from 8 to 18 earn their way in the Little Britches circuit
“I try to learn from my mistakes and improve,” says Schlegel, 16, who hopes to make a career out of rodeo.
Whether aspiring youngsters turn pro is not important, says Clay Gaillard, Little Britches marketing director. “We are not trying to stamp out professional rodeo athletes,” he says. “Our goal is to make good people out of them.”
Turning youngsters into upstanding citizens starts with the camaraderie and family atmosphere that surrounds all Little Britches rodeos.
“Little Britches is the largest and oldest of the youth rodeo associations that cover this age range. We sanction 175 to 200 rodeos a year in 12 to 14 states in the West, Midwest, and South. Many of them take place in small towns,” Gaillard says.
Little Britches has been part of Schlegel’s family from way back. His mother, Sherri, competed in Little Britches rodeos through her school years and continued barrel racing until her boys—Jerad and Joel, 13—were old enough to join.
“Jerad was riding by himself when he was 2 and swinging a rope not long after,” she recalls.
Schlegel qualified for the World Final when he was 11, but after his horse reared and fell backward, breaking the young cowboy’s leg, he went as a spectator—cheering on Joel from the grandstands. In 1999, he hurt his arm in bareback riding at the finals and had to drop out of contention for the all-around title.
Schlegel stayed injury-free in 2000, but during his first round at the finals, things started going wrong. The goat he roped got up, and he missed his calf. “I was pretty worried, but my dad told me not to look back and just try to go all out and win my next events,” says Schlegel of Burns, Colo.
That pep talk helped Schlegel rally. Twice he set a new goat-tying record and eventually won world championships in flag racing and the junior all-around.
King of Cowboys
Schlegel won the very title that Ty Murray, the “King of Cowboys,” won in the senior division nearly 14 years earlier.
Murray, 32, a seven-time All-Round World Champion and Pro Rodeo Hall of Famer who retired in May, began his renowned career in youth rodeo.
Murray began riding horses and calves at 2 and was just 5 when he was breaking from the chute in calf riding, clinging like a burr to the back of a fishtailing heifer. He also competed in barrel racing, flag racing (snatching a flag from one barrel and placing it on another), ring grab, and team roping, among other events, on the Arizona Junior Rodeo Association circuit.
Rodeo was a Murray family tradition. His mother, Joy, was the Senior All-Around World Champion for the National Little Britches Rodeo Association. Young Ty took his first lessons from his father, Butch, who once rode bulls and bucking horses.
“My dad would hold onto my belt loop and run alongside the calf, so I wouldn’t hit the ground,” recalls Murray. “I started going to Little Britches rodeo when I was 12 and was riding all three roughstock events (bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, and bull riding) a year later.”
Dubbed “The Michael Jordan of Rodeo,” Murray later would specialize in those roughstock events for his All-Around Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) titles. Murray also won PRCA World Bull Riding Championship twice and bested Larry Mahan’s six-time record for All-Around titles.
He’s grateful for those organizations that paved the way to his success. “They were all great stepping stones,” says Murray, who became the youngest cowboy millionaire in history when he was 23 and today has career earnings of nearly $3 million.
A number of organizations govern youth rodeo, many of them primarily state associations. When Murray reached high school age, he competed in both Little Britches and the National High School Rodeo, the largest youth rodeo circuit. He then went on to the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, which governs college rodeo, before turning pro at 19.
Learning to compete
For more than 50 years, Little Britches, a nonprofit based in Colorado Springs, Colo., has promoted good sportsmanship and family togetherness for young people through sports that celebrate the Western lifestyle. Contestants compete in six events.
Junior boys (8 to 13 years old) start off with steer riding, bronc riding, goat tying, flag racing, breakaway calf roping, and dally ribbon roping—a team event in which one member ropes a calf and the other grabs a ribbon from its tail and races to the finish. Senior boys (up to 18 years old) compete in the regular pro rodeo events—bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, and team roping.
Junior and senior girls contend in barrel racing, pole bending, breakaway calf roping, trail, and goat tying. The sixth event for juniors is dally ribbon roping; for seniors, it’s team roping.
Most rodeos also offer several games for children 8 and under. Little wranglers can test their riding skills in mutton busting, where the challenge is hanging on to a frisky sheep. Even younger buckaroos can join a stick horse race or the calf scramble where they chase calves to try to pull ribbons off their tails.
Little Britches competitors not only learn how to rope a speeding steer, stay glued to the back of a running or bucking horse, and dismount at a gallop, they pick up a good work ethic and build character that lasts a lifetime.
“You learn how to deal with pressure and competition,” Murray says. “And those lessons can help the whole rest of your career, even if you don’t go on to rodeo. Little Britches shows kids that how successful you want to be is determined by how much effort and practice you put into it.”
Schlegel, with his parents’ help, is determined to achieve even more success. “Either my mom or dad comes to roping practice every weekday night,” Schlegel says. “They run the chutes for the cattle and give us advice.”
And Schlegel takes practice to heart. He further hones his skills helping neighboring ranchers work cattle in a four-ranch grazing pool and helping a cowboy at a remote summer cow camp in Colorado’s Flattop Wilderness during the summer.
Fond memories
Youth rodeo also serves to strengthen family and friend relationships, proponents say.
“What we love about rodeo is that we spend a tremendous amount of time with our kids,” Sherri Schlegel says. “We are with them every single night helping them practice their roping, and then we are with them on weekends for the rodeo.”
Time together is both quality and quantity, where entire weekends are spent traveling to a rodeo and camping out with other rodeo families. Parents spend hours helping their children because, at this level, they are the only coaches. Many moms and dads also can be found volunteering as stock handlers, announcers, or chute help.
Indeed, all Little Britches rodeos use volunteers, with support coming from not just parents but grandparents, friends, and people from the local community.
“I can recall working from 5 or 6 in the morning until midnight at our National Finals Rodeo, and there were times I wanted to crawl away and hide,” says marketing director Gaillard. “Then I realized that I was the only one getting paid. Most of the volunteers take their vacations to put on this rodeo. A number have kids and may have to face a two- to three-day drive to get here and then go back.”
The payoff to such dedication can be found in strong ties and a treasured childhood.
“Some of my fondest memories of childhood are going to those rodeos with my family and friends, especially the finals,” says Murray, who remembers rodeoing at Little Britches with his cousins Casey and Rope Myers, the reigning PRCA World Champion Steer Wrestler. “People stayed in campers, motor homes, and tents, and there were rodeo dances and trips to a water slide park. It was the most fun I can imagine for a kid who was real interested in rodeo and being a cowboy.”
Competitors occasionally turn into lifetime friends. “One of my best friends who just visited me is Ben Poer,” Murray says. “We met in Little Britches when we were 12, and we are now 32, and we are still great friends. He ended up riding saddle bronc as an amateur but never went pro, but we remained in contact. I was in his wedding 10 years ago.”
In a time when families have become more fragmented, Little Britches has found a way to re-emphasize traditional values. Here, parents definitely take center stage.
As a youngster, Murray admired the rodeo champions, but his true hero is a little closer to home. “I really looked up to Larry Mahan,” he says. “But it was my dad who I looked up to the most.”
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