Rodeo provides adrenaline for crowd, contestants

CLOVIS — Ropin’, rustlin’ and ridin.’

Three words that are a surefire sign the rodeo was in town.

In a tradition that began in 1971, cowboys and cowgirls from throughout the southwest descended on the Curry County Events Center Thursday, Friday and Saturday for this year’s installment of the Pioneer Days Rodeo.

Bucking broncos, rope tricks, riders trying to rope steers or tie calves while the steers and calves tried to avoid being roped and tied, men and women literally standing tall in the saddle, local advertising on horseback.

Yes, it was Clovis rodeo time indeed.

Lest anyone think cowboys, cowgirls and rodeo is all ‘aw shucks’ and ‘hee haw’ — despite the fact that there was a horseback-riding announcer leading the crowd in shouting ‘aw shucks’ and ‘hee haw,’ plus plenty of white and black cowboy hats and neckerchiefs worn by participants and crowd members alike — it wasn’t all wild, wild western.

At Friday night’s festivities, the Events Center p.a. actually blared more late-20th-century mainstream music than country, such as theme songs from ‘Sanford and Son’ and ‘The Munsters’, along with Dire Straits, Salt ’n Pepa, Glen Frey, Bell Biv Devoe and Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, which had plenty of people — including the person typing these words — singing along with the chorus.

On Friday, the middle night of the 49th annual Pioneer Days Rodeo, the overall theme was fun for the participants and spectators, the latter seeming to be represented by just about every decade of life — from single digits on up.

Friday was also Tough Enough to Wear Pink Night, to heighten cancer awareness, followed by Thursday’s Military Appreciation Night and preceding Saturday’s First Responders Appreciation Night.

Events included bull riding, bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, calf roping, team roping, steer wrestling, steer roping, barrel racing and wild cow milking. And those representing the single-digit decade of life were not excluded from the fun. About halfway into Friday’s festivities came the mutt-busting competition, where children under 10 weighing 55 pounds or less had the chance to ride sheep while trying to stay on as long as they could. Most lasted a few seconds, and though there may have been some tears and ice packs that followed, all involved seemed to have fun trying to bust those mutts.

The rodeo has drawn in the range of 300 or more participants each year since being established back in the Nixon days. One of this year’s participants from the double-digit-age crowd was Melody Skiver of Nogales, Arizona — a town she noted was often in the news regarding the would-be border wall — who made the trek to partake in the barrel racing competition. For anyone not familiar with barrel races, three barrels are arranged in a triangular fashion and competitors try racing their horses around each barrel as fast as they can while also trying not to hit any.

Skiver said she has been riding all her life. “Professionally, this is kind of new,” she said Friday night, while sitting atop her 15-year-old horse Sweet Tea.

“I’m a ranch girl,” Skiver continued, “and my dad just had ranch horses. So we just took ranch horses and ran them around wherever we could on the ranch.”

Skiver and her daughter-in-law traveled a lot to do a little.

“We left this morning about 8 o’clock,” Skiver said. “We drove 10 hours to make a 17-second run. And then we’ll get back in the truck and drive all the way back home.”

And they were planning to turn around and make that return trip Friday night. Yet they still thought there was enough to make the trip well worth it.

“The adrenaline,” Skiver said. “I love the rodeo atmosphere, it’s just in your blood. Once it’s in your blood you can’t get it out.”

Any money won at Pioneer Days counts toward the Turquoise Circuit, which ends with its circuit finals in Arizona. The national circuit finals are held in Kissimmee, Florida, and the overall national finals take place in Las Vegas this December.