“We’ve always had horses.” said the 17-year-old senior at Elk Point-Jefferson High School. “My grandpa, he got my dad and my uncle into it. I didn’t start actual rodeo, like competing, until probably seventh grade. Other than that, we just kind of rode around the barn, but I just started when my dad was like ‘hey, do you want to enter this?’ and I said ‘sure.’ Now that’s all we do in the summer time.”

Donnelly now participates in high school and 4-H rodeos. And, this past summer, Donnelly qualified for the state 4-H state rodeo competition in August.

“For 4-H I made it to state in all my events and I ended up getting fourth in poles and third in ribbon roping,” she said.

The 4-H rodeos are held almost every weekend during the summer all over South Dakota and the state competition is held in Fort Pierre every year.

“It’s a lot of driving,” Donnelly said.

The events Donnelly competes in are goat tying, break away, barrels, poles, team roping and ribbon roping.

She has three horses she rides depending on the event. Coco is ridden for breakaway and goat tying because she will continue running past the goat and past Donnelly once she is off the horse. Coco is also good at sitting in the box while Donnelly is roping the calf.

“There’s a barrier and they have to be able to go through the barrier smoothly,” she said. “Sometimes (the horse will) want to jump it or they’ll get scared of it and not want to go, so having a horse that leaves the box at the pin,is smooth off your hand, goes through the barriers nice and has a nice stop, that usually helps a bit.”

For poles and barrels there’s Clyde because both events want a horse that is fast and can maneuver the tight turns around the objects.

“Our horse is pretty good at turning really tight around the poles, so that’s always nice because it sets you up really good for the rest of the run. Those are speed events, so a fast horse is nice and one that can rate,” Donnelly said.

And for the team roping event, where Donnelly competes as the header, Harvard is the go-to horse.

“Usually the header horse is kind of bigger because they have to pull the steer and they have to be able to go into the left lead and then once the healer catches the feet you have to face, so they have to turn around and you stretch the steer,” she said.

Donnelly practices with her horses every day during the summer with her sister and cousins at the barn they built near their house in Elk Point. The barn also had two outdoor arenas they can use to practice.

They will give each other tips to help with any problems someone might be having with the horse or with the event. She says there is not a lot of arguing between family members — for the most part.

“We all get a long really well and it’s really nice to be able to work with people and in the summers we don’t get to see our friends, so it’s nice to hang out. It brings us really close together because we spend all summer together,” she said. “Sometimes when someone gets a little upset, and sisters usually, they start to go at each other and it’s a little awkward for the rest of the day, but it’s not too bad. It’s actually a lot of fun.”

Their dads and grandpa are usually around too to help run shoots, hold the goats and act as coach.

“(Our dads) make sure we rope the dummy and if we’re not catching it or something then they’ll sit there and tell us what we’re doing wrong and what we need to work on,” Donnelly said. “They always help us try and find something else that works better for us because nobody ropes the same way.”

Her family isn’t her only friends while traveling around for rodeos. Donnelly says she has met many others while at the competitions and it’s one of the reasons she likes participating in the rodeos.

“You meet a lot of really good people out there,” she said. “I love rodeos for that reason because I have some very close friends. You do see the same people a lot because everybody is trying to go to as many as they can.”

Though the rodeos are competitions, the competitors still give each other tips or lend out equipment and horses if another rider is in need. The families even share meals together at the end of the day.

“We kind of call it a rodeo family because we have the same people that we camp by and we always grill out together afterwards and we all make breakfast in the morning. It’s just a really cool thing to be part of,” Donnelly said.

She also competes in high school rodeo, though Elk Point-Jefferson doesn’t have a school oriented rodeo team.

“It’s not seen as a sport for our school, but in order to high school rodeo, our principal has to sign off on a paper that we are passing our classes and we meet these certain requirements,” Donnelly said.

In high school rodeo there are two weekend competitions which count for four regional rodeos. The weekends are always in Watertown and Huron and competitors need four points in an event to qualify for the state high school rodeo in Belle Fouche at the end of June.

Donnelly qualified for the state rodeo in goat tying, breakaway, team roping, poles and barrels and qualified for the short go in breakaway and poles even with a borrowed horse.

“My sister was actually at junior high nationals in Des Moines with our good pole horse, so I borrowed a horse,” she said. “I had so many points from regionals and I had a good clean run at state, so I ended up making it to short go. The short go is the top 20. They take the top 20 in each event and you go and compete against each other.

“I made it in breakaway, caught my calf, but I had missed on one of the previous days so I missed my points. I was too far down to make it to nationals. That was the first time I made it to short go for high school in two events, so that was nice.”

Donnelly did qualify for high school nationals two years ago in poles, which are held each year in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

“That was a lot of fun,” she said. “For high school it’s harder to make it to nationals because they take the top four and since we only have four regional rodeos if you have one bad day at state that can kind of mess with you a little bit because it’s based off of points and it’s really tight races because everybody comes to compete.”

After graduating this spring, Donnelly will look to continue competing in rodeos at the college level at the University of Wyoming.

“In colleges they have rodeo” she said. “I’m actually looking

at Laramie, Wyoming and I’m thinking about joining the rodeo team there. It would be kind of the same thing that I do now, but there’s always something going on.”

Even if that doesn’t work out, Donnelly wants to continue to be part of rodeo in some way and continue riding.

“I’ve always thought about getting involved with something where I could ride every day and looking at volunteering,” she said.