Teens set for high school rodeo national finals
Lainy Procter would have preferred to stay in B.C., closer to her Ness Lake home, to study animal health technology as a college student.
Problem is Dawson Creek is not exactly rodeo central.
In fact, there’s only one college rodeo event in close proximity to the Northern Lights College campus four hours northeast of Prince George and that was enough to convince Procter to take her fistful of scholarships to Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alta., for the fall semester.
The 2018-19 B.C. High School Rodeo season has been especially rewarding to the 18-year-old Kelly Road Secondary School honours graduate. She won the B.C. high school small-bore rifle shooting crown, finished second in the north in barrel racing and was fourth in pole bending and goat tying.
As the B.C. champion in rifle shooting, Procter will compete at the National High School Rodeo Finals in Rock Springs, Wy., July 15-21. Until this season she’d never competed in the event but her background in target archery paid off when she won both Prince George shoots and duplicated the feat in Fort St. John.
“I’ve shot guns all my life because my family hunts and I was in competitive archery for a really long time, as long as I could hold a bow, and that really helped,” she said.
“The rifle shoot is new, about three years, and I’d never done it before because they always had it up north but Christine (Jones) brought it to Prince George and I thought it would be fun to do with my dad.
“It’s really big in the States and there’s a lot of money in scholarships down there. That was another big draw because school’s expensive.”
Procter hurt her shoulder in a goat tying event a few years ago and stopped slinging arrows after winning bronze at the 2016 B.C. Winter Games so she could focus more on her rodeo events.
She likely would have contended for the B.C. title in barrels, but her horse Corona suffered a bad bruise in a fall a few months ago in Fort St. John and she rode the rest of the season on a horse she borrowed from Lannae Boyd, a friend in Chetwynd.
“I should be going to nationals for barrels but he had a really big fall and I had to keep myself and my horse safe, so we had to make slower runs,” Procter said.
“I was really proud of myself to stay up there. I went into the spring season in first place and to only drop down one place on someone else’s horse is really cool. I high school rodeoed with (Boyd) and with that horse (Gunner) all my life.
Payden Hinton, a Grade 11 student at College Heights Secondary School, also qualified for the National Finals in Wyoming. Hinton placed second in the north in pole bending and was fifth in goat tying and tied for fifth in barrel racing. Hinton is entered in the Finals in goat tying and cutting, an event which requires her to separate a cow from the rest of the herd.
Procter is the current president of the BCHSRA and has been rodeoing since she was five, when she started riding ponies in Little Britches events. That got her trained in barrel racing, pole bending, goat tying and dummy roping.
“I did Little Britches rodeo until I aged out, from five to 16, and it really brought me up,” she said.
“I loved it, and it really started my rodeo career.”
Procter and Hinton hit all the BCHSRA north region events in Chetwynd, Hudson Hope, Quesnel and Williams Lake and that meant some lengthy trips each way hauling their horses from Prince George. Procter’s trip to Wyoming will be a breeze by comparison. She won’t need a horse and she’ll be using a borrowed rifle so that means less hassle crossing the border.
“I never travel without a horse, so this is really weird,” she said
“It’s a blessing in disguise because traveling that far is really hard on a horse. My horse will be happy in a field at home.”
Procter has B.C. Rodeo Association events on her calendar this summer and plans to compete in college rodeos in Canada for the next two seasons before she pursues her options at U.S. colleges.
“When you look at the people at the National Finals Rodeo, there’s only a handful that didn’t (compete in) high school or college rodeo,” said Procter.
“In Canada, college rodeo is less competitive, but in the States it’s huge. It’s the same level as pro rodeo.
“I had contact from Idaho State University to come and rodeo for them but I’m not ready to go to the States yet. Even Vermilion will be a big move.”