Women’s rodeo team ropes Casper rodeo

This past week the CSC Rodeo team traveled to Casper, Wyoming, to compete in the Casper College Rodeo.

Led by all-around cowgirl Amy Tierney, senior of Oral, South Dakota; goat tying champion Shelby Winchell, senior of Scottsbluff; and Katie Loughran, junior of Broken Bow, the Chadron State women won most of the top honors and won the women’s team title with 318.3 points. Gillette College was runner up with 88 points less that CSC. This win led the CSC women closer to the lead in the Central Rocky Mountain Region’s team standing.

Only one rodeo remains in the season, but CSC is only 42 points behind Gillette College’s 2,815 points with 2,773 points. CSC has already secured one of the top two spots, which guarantees that they will advance to the College National Finals Rodeo, also in Casper, June 15-21.

This is the fourth team title that the CSC cowgirls have won this year. However, they have also tied for top honors at nine other rodeos in the region, placed second twice, tied for second and third once, and finished third once.

Tierney won the all-around title by placing second in barrels and sharing second place with Winchell in the first go-round of goat tying. Tierney’s times in the barrels were 15.75 seconds in the first go-round and 15.5 in the finals. She tied her first goat in 7.7 seconds, but her second goat failed to remain tied. This dropped Tierney out of the averages in the goat tying, but her fast time in the opening go-round earned her points in the all-around competition.

Winchell tied her goat in the championship round in 7.1 seconds, the fastest time at the rodeo, to wrap up the championship title.

Shaylee Hance, junior of Circle, Montana, was third in the averages in for the goat tying this past weekend. She tied her first goat in 8.1 seconds, fast enough to tie her for seventh place in the go-round, and then came in second behind Winchell in the championship go-round with a run of 7.5 seconds.

Loughran cruised to the top of the standings in barrel racing with a time of 15.69 seconds in the opening go-round to earn her second. She then posted a time of 15.45 seconds, the fastest time of the rodeo, in the finals on Sunday to take the championship title.

There were other CSC cowgirls that did will in the averages. Amy Deichert, junior of Spearfish, South Dakota, roped her calves in 3.3 and 3.5 seconds in the breakaway roping to earn her fourth in the averages.

Danni Jo Hinman, junior of Hay Springs, and Vanzi Knippling, freshman of Sturgis, South Dakota, each roped their first calf in 2.7 seconds in breakaway to share second place in the first go-round. However, both Hinman and Knippling missed their second calves.

There were two CSC cowboys that advanced to the finals. They were Russell Hipke, senior of Stuart, and Derek Powers, junior of Arthur. Hipke finished fifth in the steer wrestling after posting times of 6.4 and 6.8 in the first go-round and the championship go-round respectively.

Powers advanced to the championship go-round in the tie-down roping after tying his calf in 10.9 seconds in the first go-round. He caught his calf in the championship go-round, but had trouble tying it and ended up taking a time 17.5 seconds.

The next and final rodeo in the region will be this weekend at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.