Brave and trained cowgirl keikis and teens from across the Oahu Island came and competed in the women’s rodeo at Gunstock ranch in Kahuku on Feb. 23. The rodeo featured four divisions of barrel racing and roping. Rodeo is said to be a competitive sport organized during the late 1800’s to test a cowboy’s working skills in managing horses and herding cattle. A few years later, women began participating in a rodeo allowing them to be part of the sport. Today, the rodeo is done to test both cowboy and cowgirl athletes’ ability and speed in racing and roping. The Gunstock ranch hosted the event on Saturday welcoming visitors to witness the competition. Greg Smith, 45, owner of the Gunstock ranch from Hawaii, said, “The ranch has been here for 40 years, since 1973. My father started the ranch and I grew up working it and we’ve just kept in the family. [The women’s rodeo] is our winter series barrel racing and roping event. We run it during the wintertime. We’ve done it, I think now, for about 3 or 4 years. And it’s gotten bigger and bigger every year. It brings out all the barrel racers from the island of Oahu here to give them a place to go and race their horses, have fun doing it and compete against each other . . . It’s not for women only, but most of the time, women usually do barrel racing. We’ve had a roping event also and we’ll have team roping. That’s where most of the men do the roping.” The event started with exhibition runs followed by barrel racing, participated by keikis and teen groups, and breakaway roping by teen division. Kayla Smith, a daughter of Greg Smith, won first place in the barrel racing, keiki division. “I have been riding my horse for about 8 years. I practice a lot with my horse. My horse’s name is Jane. So I began riding the horse after my sister. She started riding Jane and I started trying her out and she became my rodeo horse,” said 10-year- old Smith. “I actually had three daughters racing today . . . What has been nice is, that it’s gotten a lot bigger. A lot more girls have come out from the island so we have a lot of barrel racers come out. It’s been good competition. It’s fun to do it. We put it on so that they have a place to show off their skills for horseback riding and a lot of the girls that come out here and run. Some of them practice everyday for this kind of event. There are barrel races that go on in different parts of the island, but this is just one of them that we put on and I really enjoy doing it, having it here in our arena . . . We really like our ground . . . Horses can run really fast. It’s free for the public to come watch,” said Mr. Smith. For the barrel racing teen division, Sidney Porter, 16, from North Shore, Oahu, garnered first place. Porter showed her domination over other competitors by winning first place for the second time in the breakaway roping category. “I have lived in this community all my life. I have been rodeoing ever since I was three years old. This event today was a barrel racing series that we’ve had twice. Winning it is really an accomplishment for me because it means that me and my horse have worked together and that we’ve accomplished something that not many people do but it feels great and I hope that I get to do it again.” Porter’s horse, Lana, also won the horse of the year. Dreama Carroll, a third grade teacher at Sunset Beach Elementary School from Hawaii, was the promoter and organizer of the rodeo. “I put the events on. I scheduled three rodeos. The first was in November. The second was January and this is our final one. In the first two events, we had about 35 girls but there’s a rodeo in Kauai this weekend so we had about half of the number of girls here for this event.” “It’s a really good opportunity for young beginning barrel racers to come because these are pretty minimal and there’s not a lot of pressure. And so we want the girls to have fun and come to get a good experience,” added Carroll. Along with other visitors was the Pettit family from Texas. Ryan Pettit and his wife Eliane, both BYU-Hawaii alumni who graduated in 2000, arrived shortly after the barrel racing category together with their two kids, Malia and Alana. “We just moved back here from Texas . . . We love horses, love rodeo. This our family activity today. Our kids were born in Texas, so they’re big cowgirls . . We think it’s fun to come out then be out in nature and enjoy the animals our here,” said Mrs. Pettit. “It would be fun to get a lot of activities here. We were living in Texas for 10 years and they had a huge rodeo and we get to watch all the barrel racing, the roping, the bull riding . . . So yeah, that’s why we love coming out here to see all the racing to see how talented some of the kids who are doing it,” she added. Other competitors enjoyed the opportunity to have fun and share their skills at the rodeo. Lorrie Ann Smith, a sophomore at Kahuku High School and one of Greg’s daughters, also competed in the event. She said, “I barrel race, breakaway and I team rope. I also do high school rodeo, which has goat tying and bulldogging, and all a bunch of other events . . .I’ve been rodeoing for about 15 years. It’s a great opportunity. It’s a great lifestyle to be a part of [the rodeo]. It opens a lot of doors to explore the world and take on responsibilities.”
Writer: Ma.Vis Taguba~Multimedia Journalist
