The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Kaila Mussell. Photo by Craig Eisenbeis

Rodeo fans are used to seeing lots of pretty girls at the rodeo. They're the rodeo queens, the barrel racers, the flag girls.

What people don't expect, however, is to see the girls riding the rough stock. But that's because they haven't met Kaila Mussell.

The saddle bronc rider from Chilliwack, British Columbia, was in Sisters last week and had a successful ride in the Saturday night performance. Mussell, who started riding junior steers at the age of 10, comes from a rodeo family.

Her dad was a saddle bronc and bull rider, mom was a rodeo queen, her brother rode broncs and her sister runs the barrels.

Kaila, herself, was a barrel racer for awhile, but she prefers the rougher riding.

In fact, the 24-year-old is the first woman rough stock rider to "fill" her Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) card. Filling her card means that she has earned over $1,000 on the circuit and is officially a professional cowboy... uh... girl.

Her first money came last year at Prineville, and she topped $1,000 during the winter at Okeechobee, Florida.

Mussell says that, with one exception, she has been well-received on the circuit.

"Overall," she said, "it's been pretty positive, considering it's a male-oriented sport. They know I'm not doing this to get attention. I just really like riding broncs."

The exception occurred a few weeks ago at Innisville, Alberta, and "it was all over the papers," she said.

"The rodeo producer didn't want me to ride. He said that girls shouldn't be riding."

She ended up getting her chance to ride but got bucked off.

In Sisters, she fared better and finished with a respectable score. She said that ride was only the second for her horse, Big Bucks; she didn't really know what to expect since the horse didn't have much of a history. She did better than Big Bucks' first rider, however. He was bucked off.

Cowboys routinely dash from one rodeo to another, often catching multiple rodeos in a single weekend. On Saturday, Mussell had just arrived from Roseburg and was waiting to hear the final standings. When she left, she was in a tie for second, with one more round to go.

Next weekend, she's headed to Alberta.

"I love it," she said. "The whole lifestyle of rodeo is what I like -- the traveling, the camaraderie, everything."

She said her parents are supportive of her lifestyle choice, but she knows it's not what they would have chosen for her.

"I've been through a lot of wrecks, and they'd probably prefer I was doing something else."

Last week, in Union, she had one of those "wrecks." PRCA Rodeo Secretary Edie Longfellow said, "That last horse that bucked her off, most cowboys don't get on him because he's really hard to ride; and if you do ride him, he's not showy enough to win any money on him."

When she got bucked off, her foot caught in a stirrup and she was dragged underneath the bucking horse.

"I got kicked in the head and dislocated a finger," she said.

She completed her Sisters ride with four staples in her head and a mighty sore hand.

"She's pretty tough," said Bobby Mote, Redmond Cowboy and 2002 PRCA World Bareback Champion. "She can ride with the boys, that's for sure."