Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com
Published - Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Organizers hope Little Britches rodeo will spur interest in riding, roping
This spring, something new blossomed at the Coulee Region Riders Club grounds just south of Holmen: a new youth rodeo event. Time will tell whether it turns out to be a perennial tradition.
The Coulee Region Riders Club has hosted a high school rodeo on Labor Day weekend for more than a decade now, but this year the group took on another event, hosting a Little Britches of Wisconsin rodeo for riders ages 6-18.
Last weekend’s two-day event drew entries from around the state. Between bull and bronc riding, steer wrestling, pole bending, barrel racing, goat tying and breakaway roping, participants logged more than 330 “runs,” according to Tim Devine of Holmen, a member of the Coulee Region Riders Club who handled duties at the event.
The LBW bylaws allow for only 10 rodeos per year on the schedule, and for years there was a waiting list of communities who wanted to bring a rodeo to town. When the opportunity to host the spring opener came up, CRRC member Ken Smith was eager to rope it for Holmen.
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Smith, who now lives in Ettrick, grew up in Holmen, and he and his brothers roped and rode rough stock in LBW events across the state. Last year, Smith’s daughter, 11-year-old Faith, started competing in LBW rodeos, so there was an extra incentive to bring rodeo home to Holmen.
Of course, any driving time saved for local participants was offset by the work put into putting on the rodeo by local volunteers, which included the Holmen Lions Club and Holmen Area Fire Department, in addition to the Coulee Region Riders Club.
“We all had fun. We worked hard to get it put together, but we all had fun,” Smith said. “It’s not the easiest thing to pull off because you have so many kids at so many different ages.”
Not only was last weekend’s Holmen rodeo the first LBW event at the CRRC grounds, it also was the first rodeo for a lot of the riders. Both Devine and Smith emphasized that getting more young riders interested in rodeo is vital to the sport’s future.
“If you don’t get them started at a young age like that, you don’t have them for high school,” Smith said.
Little Britches, which started out as a single annual rodeo back in the early 1950s, now boasts more than 150 rodeo events across the country. And the thing is, youngsters don’t have to have a big ranch out in the country to participate. They don’t even have to own a horse.
“If you want to ride the rough stock, you don’t need a farm,” Smith said.
Newcomers to the sport can learn the ropes at LBW rodeo clinics. The CRRC hosted one the weekend before the the rodeo. The club also hosts monthly gymkhanas, which offer riders of all ages a chance to hone their riding skills. They’re held the third Friday of the month starting at 6 p.m.
Spectators at last weekend’s rodeo saw riders familiar from the Labor Day high school rodeos, but they also saw a lot of younger cowboys and cowgirls. Being the first rodeo of the year, a lot of the riders were a little rusty. In open-class breakaway roping, for example, only one rider out of 20 (Griffin Newlun) managed to get a rope around a speeding calf.
Smith’s daughter was one of those who came up short in the roping, but she did notch top-10 times in pole bending and barrel racing.
Devine and Smith aren’t absolutely sure the LBW rodeo will be back next year, but one of the keys to establishing the event as a tradition is making sure that spectators as well as participants come out. Smith emphasizes that the rodeo is good clean entertainment for the whole family.
“If you don’t have a good show for the spectators to watch, they’re not going to come back,” Smith said. “It’s just a different way to spend a weekend. I think it’s put on pretty close to as well as any professional rodeo you’ll see.”
All stories copyright 2006 Coulee News and other attributed sources.