R A Diminishing Activity 20vHERVOICEvJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 odeo may be a diminishing activity around southeastern South Dakota, but it’s how Payton Donnelly from Elk Point spends her summers. “We’ve always had horses.” said the 17-yearold 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