By SAMI MCGUIRE
Sports Editor
Play. The sun is beating down, it’s a hot day in August. I’m unloading hay into a stall. There are two girls there, one tall and blonde and the other short and brunette. I don’t think much about who they are. They are just new girls on the rodeo team, just like me.
Fast forward. It’s February of my freshman year, I’ve all but moved into my boyfriend’s house and out of the dorms. Growing up I was surrounded by dogs and cats and horses and cattle. I have my horses, but I want a dog so bad. One day I pull up to a little trailer house in Alva, after seeing a post on Facebook. I’m with the tall blonde girl who is now my best friend, and we pick up a little Yorkie that is the size of my palm.
Fast forward. It’s May. The blonde girl and I live together. We rope every morning before the sun comes up. We go lay out at the local pool to get tan every day till 3 p.m., and then we go to work at a little BBQ joint in some tiny little ghost town. We come home in the evenings and play cards and drink with the short brunette girl. And every day goes on like this, we are in ignorant bliss. I don’t think I can get much happier, and then I get the call that I get to go to the College National Finals Rodeo.
Fast Forward. My boyfriend from my freshman year didn’t last. It’s the first college rodeo of my sophomore year, and I have a team roping partner that I’ve never met. He seems kind of like a goofball from what I’ve heard and seen of him, but he has beautiful green eyes. Eyes that I’m trying not to focus on right before our team roping run.
Fast forward. It’s New Years Eve. I’m at some hotel bar in Amarillo, Texas, with my blonde best friend and my green-eyed roping partner. The countdown starts for the ball to drop, 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… and my green-eyed team roping partner looks to me and tells me he doesn’t want to team rope with me anymore. Instead, he wants to be my boyfriend.
Fast forward. College rodeos are going terribly. My horse isn’t working. My roping isn’t working. My goals of going back to college finals are shattering before my eyes. I make mistake after mistake until I can’t handle it anymore. Summer comes and rodeos keep going terribly. I go home. I have no money. I have no dignity left.
Fast forward. I’m living with all of my best friends. We spend each night sitting around the white table in our kitchen talking until we can’t keep our eyes open. The house is filled with dogs and joy. My little Yorkie is running the roost, barking at every dog that steps out of line. This is my family. This is my home, and I never want it to change.
Fast forward. It’s snowing, in April, in Oklahoma, at the last college rodeo of my junior year. My hand is in a cast, and I’m riding my young horse. The horse I trained start to finish. I brought him just to see how he’d do, and we placed second in the long round, but now it is the short round. My nerves are climbing. My hands are numb and my horse is nervous under me. My green-eyed boyfriend stands beside me keeping my rope shielded from the snow. They call my name. I can’t feel my fingers on my rope. I ride in the box nod my head and win the rodeo.
Fast forward. All my friends go home for the summer, and I can’t stomach going home to Minnesota, so I go to Utah. I live with my aunt. I bring my horses, and I try to rodeo, but it isn’t going well. I apply for job after job, internship after internship. I go to many interviews and push through my painful awkwardness to try and seem normal. I get an unpaid internship. A job writing rodeo stories for a paper in Salt Lake City. But none of it pays, so I get a job at the local Papa Murphy’s with a bunch of high school kids.
Fast forward. It’s senior year, my blonde friend and my brunette friend have both graduated. I have to move in with another younger friend on the rodeo team. I work almost every day of the week at the BBQ place. I also work for the school at the paper. I write rodeo stories for my internship. I’m trying to do my best work, so I can build a portfolio to get a job. At this rate, I’m going to need a good job, because rodeo is not panning out. I sold my good horse and have to rely on my young horse’s unpredictability at every rodeo. There’s just one college rodeo left, and then I graduate.
Fast forward. Stop. I’m wearing a red dress under my black gown. I’m holding my cap on my head because the wind is blowing like it always does in Oklahoma. I’m standing next to a friend, waiting to receive my diploma. I can see my mom in the crowd chatting with the people sitting next to her and I wait. I wait to finish out one chapter and start the next. I wait to say goodbye to Northwestern Oklahoma State University.