Competing in new Sisters Rodeo event

Brooke Blevins grew up around horses in Central Oregon. Being surrounded by horses at a young age, she always knew she wanted to pursue professional riding and rodeo.

Her grandma got her on horseback when she was in diapers. She began riding around the house and trail riding and eventually ended up working on barrel racing and pole bending – both rodeo events.

“As I got more confident in events on horseback, I decided I wanted to further build up my confidence and do more with it and get into rodeo,” she said.

Pole bending is a timed event that features a horse and rider running a weaving or serpentine path around six poles arranged in a line. Blevins also got into goat tying, which is a version of breakaway roping, but … with goats.

“I then got into true breakaway roping and absolutely loved it and realized I wanted to pursue this as a main event and got super high-key and knew I could succeed in it,” she said.

Breakaway roping is a timed event in the same family as team roping and tie-down roping, but the calf is not thrown and tied. The lasso rope breaks away when the roped calf stretches it taut. Blevins pursued breakaway roping as her main rodeo event because it combined her coordination and riding skills but was different than barrel racing.

Blevins has competed at state, junior worlds, and for Oregon High School Rodeo Association events. She competes mainly in breakaway roping, but also goat tying, team roping, and barrels. Blevins recently found out that she received a full-ride scholarship to Ranger College in Texas for breakaway roping. She will be attending Ranger in fall 2022, competing as she works to finish up pre-requisite classes. After prereq classes, she plans to get into a four-year college and become an ultrasound technician, while still pursuing rodeo. When her family visited the college in Texas, the coach met with her and offered her the scholarship.

“He believed in me and believed that I could go far in the events and pursuing higher-level rodeo, so he offered me the full-ride scholarship,” she said.

Blevins was born and raised in Central Oregon and grew up going to the Sisters Rodeo every year.

“We started going for my birthday every year, so I had something to look forward to for it and then began to get really involved in the Rodeo,” said Blevins.

Blevins made many connections with members of the rodeo committee and within the Sisters Rodeo family and had always wanted to compete in some event.

This year, for the first time, Sisters Rodeo will include breakaway roping as a female-only event for a jackpot win. Barrel racing is the only other female event at Sisters Rodeo.

Blevins is part of the first group of women competing in breakaway roping at the Sisters Rodeo. Although she had always wanted to enter the Sisters Rodeo, she never had a good barrel horse. Once breakaway roping opened, she knew she wanted to be competing.

“I am excited to be competing in this rodeo in my best event of breakaway roping. Because of the connections and amazing people I met, they helped me to get in to compete this year,” she said. “I am really lucky to be competing and have so many resources at such a young age, especially entering into the rodeo circuit in my rookie year.”

She’ll be listed as rookie when starting out in pro rodeo at the age of 18 in June. Blevins plans to continue rodeoing into her days at Ranger College and continuing the circuit in breakaway roping and her other events

“I want to continue getting better, learning, and continuing the level I am at and building my confidence for bigger competitions. I hope that after college I can enter higher- level breakaway jackpots, especially in Texas, which has the highest level of pro-rodeo jackpots, particularly in that event,” said Blevins.

Blevins will be competing with her breakaway roping horse during this year’s Sisters Rodeo, which is taking place after being on pause due to the pandemic for the past two years. This year’s rodeo runs Wednesday, June 8, through Sunday, June 12, with the specialty PRCA Xtreme Bulls event on Wednesday evening and full rodeo performances beginning on Friday, June 10. For tickets and information visit http://www.sistersrodeo.com.