High school rodeo competitors team up for Special Rodeo

2009 Special Rodeo Competitors:
After all the rodeo fun was said and done, the special competitors that attended the rodeo posed for a picture with their mentors from the event. They learned how to rope, ride and race around the arena mentored by local rodeo youth from the CHSRA District One.

The California High School Rodeo Association (CHSRA) District One rodeo team, joined efforts with their official sponsors, Cargill, Nutrena and Wrangler to hold their yearly Special Rodeo for youth from Shasta and Tehama Counties on Feb. 28.

The cowboys and cowgirls from the area teamed up with their own special competitor to rope, ride and race. There were 30 special competitors at the rodeo in Red Bluff that had their picture taken with the CHSRA District 1 Rodeo Queen, Brooke Martin of Yreka, and were treated like queens and kings. The youth were given cowboy hats, bandannas, colorful ropes, back numbers, a free western buckaroo barbecue lunch and all the fun they could muster in the arena with their mentors for an hour of non stop rodeo. At the end of the Special Rodeo, the special competitors were awarded a "Buckin' Olympic Medallion," and a group picture was taken of the participants and mentors together.

The events the special competitors took part in were: bucking bulls and horses, running pole bending, stick horse barrel racing, roping with roping dummies and goat undecorating.

The only live "livestock" used, were the goats that had ribbons tied to their tails and the contestants came over to undecorate them.

Matt Wolter from Corning, came up to officially announce the special rodeo and talk with some of the contestants and announce their winning events. Some of the contestants waved their hats in the air while riding on the wooden rocking bulls and horses, which had heads that resembled bulls and horses. With questions from their mentors and event workers, asking "Are you ready to ride, cowboy?" as asked by Blaine "Bubba" Davies of Gerber to many a young contestant.

The youth of the California High School Rodeo Association were the directors, crew members and youth organizers of the event. They all worked together unloading, setting up the events, mentoring the special contestants and cleaning up after the event was over.

Special Kids Rodeo Coordinator, Paula McCarley of Cottonwood has been working on the event for the past four years and finds it important to the community as a whole. The Special Kids Rodeo Program has been in existence for approximately 30 years.

"It is a chance for our rodeo kids to give back to the community and to make the special rodeo contestants feel special and forget their cares for a day. It also helps to build new friendships between the high school rodeo participants and new friends that they are spending time mentoring at the event," said McCarley. "I think that the older kids that spend most of their time rodeoing have more fun working with the special contestants than the kids do that are actually there."

High Fives were seen exchanged between the special contestants and their rodeo mentors.

"I feel that it is a privilege to be able to work on special rodeos with the kids and to be able to share with them my background of the sport that I love so much. It is nice to be able to help them learn," said Morgan McCarley.

At the end of the Special Rodeo, many of the contestants stayed to eat their buckaroo barbecue lunch and watched their new friends until the last bull was rode and the last pole was run in the pole bending event.

"It is really cool that the kids were able to have fun, and fun for us as competitors to be able to teach what we do at our rodeos. It was a nice time out of competition to be able to spend time with the kids," said Madison McCarley.

"There were approximately 100 applications sent out to various organizations about the event. The amount of special rodeo contestants from year to year can depend on the weather," stated coordinator Paula McCarley, "There were a lot of parents that came up to talk to me throughout the day, thanking us for putting on the event. I see this as something that will grow in numbers throughout the years."