Rodeo this girls favorite sport
Randi Tarter can probably tie up a goat or rope a calf quicker than any other Timberlake High School student. She’s earned four first-place belt buckles from rodeo competitions as proof of her ability.
When other kids say there’s nothing to do, she just thinks they should try living in Halfway, Ore. That’s where the 16-year-old lived until last summer when she moved to Athol with her mother and stepfather. Halfway was a town of 300, more than an hour away from “anything,” Tarter said.
It was there that she learned how to make her own fun. On a ranch with 500 head of cattle, she learned to ride, train and break horses. She began doing that as a paid profession at the age of 12.
“I just love horses so much,” she said. “I rode them all the time.”
She has five quarter horses of her own and trained a finals winner for the National Cutting Horse Association. That involved teaching a fast, athletic horse to herd a cow away from the rest of the cattle.
It was a natural progression for Tarter to compete in rodeos, which she started entering at age 11.
“I’ve always watched rodeos and thought I wanted to do it,” she said.
Her awards in Oregon were in “all-around” categories, where she was rated on such things as roping calves, pole bending and goat tying. She competed against more than 20 other participants in the under-18 division.
She added team roping to her repertoire last year and competed at the rodeo in Garwood. She can usually be found there three or four nights per week come spring. She enjoys being around others who understand what she likes and don’t question it, she said. In team roping there is a “header” and a “heeler.” One ropes the head of a calf and the other gets the heels. Tarter was the header and her partners, all male, were the heelers.
It was a new area of competition for her, and although her teams didn’t win anything, she caught on quickly and believes that by next year she’ll garner a few prizes.
“I was close,” she said.
Few females are seen at the competitions and the guys don’t expect much of the girls, Tarter said. She’s surprised some of them and believes that size and strength aren’t as important as coordination and technique. She fine-tuned those skills while trying to catch and brand cattle on her family’s ranch.
“It’s different in the arena than it is in the field, but it’s still the same strategy,” she said. “Because I’ve been around horses all my life, it’s just kind of natural.”
The thrill of the sport comes while Tarter waits in “the box” before the animals are released for the chase.
“It’s real exciting – it gets your adrenaline going,” she said.
Her goals for the future include becoming a veterinarian for large animals and to go professional with team roping. She takes advanced math classes and is set to study physics next year as a senior.
Tarter has participated on volleyball and softball teams and was on Timberlake’s varsity basketball team, but she plans to forgo other sports next year. She wants to concentrate on horses.
“Rodeo’s more important to me,” she said.