Cowgirls Helping Cowgirls
By Julie Mankin
There has been a beautiful parallel between the rising popularity in women’s sports (thank you, Caitlin Clark), the overdue enforcement of Title IX that protects the integrity of all-female competition, and what’s happening for rodeo cowgirls right now.
Pro rodeos in the Northwest had included all-lady ropers first, then the snowball got rolling when breakaway was added to the lucrative Bob Feist Invitational jackpots. That influenced the adjacent televised Reno Rodeo to showcase lady ropers.
Soon, World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA) made breakaway a standard event at its professional rodeos – meaning the 2018 Days of ’47 rodeo in Salt Lake City became the first major rodeo to give girls who rope their own platform and money. Then, The American in 2019 added breakaway inside AT&T Stadium. As a result, this season women have their own roping event at some 500 PRCA rodeos – including the Calgary Stampede – for the first time.
Plus, the WCRA partnered with the PBR to launch Women’s Rodeo Championships (WRC) with a mission of creating more opportunities for women in rodeo and elevating their presence in all sports (the winning heeler last year earned $60,500).
What’s more, it created the annual Pam Minick Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize female leaders who’ve made outstanding contributions to Western sports while supporting cowgirls. And this spring for the first time ever, the Women’s Rodeo World Championships (WRWC) inside AT&T Stadium will include a $10,000-added goat-tying showcase.
While competitors themselves are a big part of more opportunities for cowgirls, as usual, it’s been other cowgirls doing the dirty work of persuading decision-makers to offer more opportunities, landing big sponsorships, dipping their toe into politics or just getting the word out. We profile two of them here, and more next month.
A giving spirit
A decade ago, fourth-generation world champion roper Mary Ann Miller of Arizona had already spent years trying to get enough funding to produce a documentary about women’s rodeo, but the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) was too strapped for cash or time to help. In 2023, she took it upon herself to spearhead efforts to gain Tito’s Handmade Vodka as the official vodka partner of the 2024 WRWC – now the world’s richest all-female rodeo.
“It was an honor to start the partnership with WRC – an organization that’s as dedicated to providing opportunities for cowgirls as Tito’s is to supporting them,” said Miller, who noted the WRWC will pay winning cowgirls more than $800,000 this year in heading, heeling, breakaway and barrel racing, plus a prestigious all-around title.
Miller won back-to-back WPRA heading world titles in 2006-07 after her father John Miller was the 1970-71 PRCA world champ, her great-uncle Ben Johnson won the gold buckle in 1953, and her great-grandfather Ben Johnson Sr. claimed the 1922 gold buckle in steer roping. Mary Ann’s mother, Barbara Bell Miller, ran barrels at the NFR back when equal money for cowgirls was just a pipe dream.
“I originally reached out to Tito’s to help fund my Miller Johnson Foundation,” said Mary Ann. “Uncle Ben used to have a lot of celebrity events to raise money for the sick or underprivileged. As a kid, that made a huge impression on me, to see those rodeo legends and movie stars show up to change someone’s life for the better. So, I set up the foundation in honor of my family’s giving spirit, to support the financial health of Western families in need, whether due to natural circumstances, medical emergency or natural disaster.”
Miller hopes to continue fundraising efforts to establish the foundation as a leg up to people living the Western lifestyle who need help.
“Our very first recipient was a cowboy who’d gotten his chaps hung on his saddle horn and gotten drug by a horse, which put him in intensive care,” she said of the Miller Johnson Foundation, for which more donation details and contact information can be found at MillerJohnsonFoundation.com. “We’ve also sponsored roping clinics for youths that want to get better and can’t afford lessons. Things like that.”
The first thing the Tito’s founder asked Miller was how he could help. He’d struggled in the early years of starting Tito’s, so today the company is quite philanthropic. And now, America’s best-selling distilled spirit supports cowgirls by also backing the Kimes Ranch Million-Dollar Breakaway, the Horse Sale at Rancho Rio and the National Finals of Breakaway Roping.
Flame for rodeo
“It’s amazing to have attended the Kimes Ranch Breakaway and watch it pay out a million bucks, and to know that in six years at WRWC we’ve paid out $3.75 million,” said Sami Jo Smith, the WCRA’s Director of Operations and Administration. “It’s just really exciting to see opportunities growing for women across the industry.”
Smith was a city girl who loved horses. After serving as Miss Frontier in her native Cheyenne, Wyoming, she met the Vold family through the famed Frontier Days and spent a weekend at their ranch.
“That weekend with the Volds really immersed me and ignited the flame for rodeo in my heart,” she said.
Smith went on to intern at the College National Finals Rodeo (CNFR) and the NFR before launching a career in event logistics and operations. She worked behind the scenes for years during The American, the Days of ’47, the short-lived ERA and now for the WCRA since its inception.
“I still think there’s a lot of room for more opportunities and more money in women’s rodeo throughout the year,” said Smith. “I hope that when my daughter turns 18, she could make a six-figure income as a rodeo athlete alongside many other women, not just a few.”
Last year for the first time, thanks to competitive cowgirl, wife, mother and WRC Commissioner Linsay Rosser Sumpter, the WCRA partnered with the NIRA to give $10,000 cash to the highest point-getter nominating the CNFR. But goat tyers weren’t eligible.
“Linsay and I thought, ‘We’ve got to raise the bar, because these girls are having to retire after college,” Smith said. “That’s not the WCRA’s mission.”
So now, goat tyers can nominate their college rodeos and not only be eligible for the $10,000 Top Hand bonus at the CNFR, but also compete at the Smarty Rodeo Goat Tying Showcase during the WRWC with $10,000 added. She expects goat-tying nominations to become available at amateur and youth rodeos next season.
“All this progress with purse money would not be possible without people like Matt and Amanda Kimes, and the team at WCRA and PBR for saying, ‘Let’s put these girls in the football stadium during the PBR World Finals.’ Right?” said Smith. “I have to applaud those who had the courage and power to say, ‘It’s time. Let’s do this.’ And throughout the rest of my career, I can continue to apply that, as well, and make more changes.”
More applause, clearly, is due cowgirls like these who’ve rolled up their sleeves, brainstormed and put boots on the ground to push more money and more competitive opportunities for ladies into ProRrodeo.
