The thing they call rodeo

Basketball junkies that live in the country may have a basketball hoop affixed to a wall in their barn or to the side of their garage. If they’re really into wrestling, they may have a wrestling mat in their family room, or football gurus may have uprights out on their lawn where they can actually play football and practice the right way.

For Colton and Carli Stuva, they have a large barn on their acreage in rural southwestern Adair County for one purpose — practicing their rodeo events year-round.

Colton, a junior at Nodaway Valley High School, and Carli, a seventh-grader at the middle school, love the connection they have with their equine athletes. They have five horses they typically ride in rodeo competition. Colton rides in high school competition and Carli at the junior high level.

The Stuva’s father, Chris, has been involved in rodeos for most of his life. His father, Danny, was an accomplished rodeo man as well.

“It’s a lot of fun to see the kids do well. I almost get more enjoyment out of seeing the kids do well than I do myself competing,” Chris said. “It’s something we grew up with and I know what it takes to get to the point they’re at. They probably don’t realize it yet at their age but they’re doing extremely well. It’s neat to see them and their peers improve every weekend.”

Colton, who began riding in rodeos competitively in seventh grade, remembers growing up attending rodeos with his parents.

“We went to rodeos about every weekend,” Colton said. “I liked them from the beginning, watching them rope and do well.”

Colton now does team roping as one of his events. He says that event might be his favorite. His teammate is a young man from Nebraska. Colton also competed at the National High School Rodeo last summer in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Carli was first on a horse with her mother at when she was three weeks old and she has been barrel racing from a very young age. When she got into rodeoing competitively, Carli says the hardest event for her to pick up was goat tying, a timed event where she’s mounted, has to ride to a goat, dismount from her horse, catch a goat, get it down and tie any three of its legs together. She won that event Sept. 29 in Waterloo with a time of 11.833 seconds.

She’s come up through the ranks in her sport and last summer, at the Adair County Fair, Carli was named the 2018 Junior Cowgirl Queen. When she moved on to the Iowa State Fair and competed for that crown, Iowa Public Television came up to her and interviewed her, and it aired on the station’s coverage of the state fair.

“It was funny because I was just washing my horse and they stopped to talk,” Carli said. “I was like, ‘What?!’”

On the rodeo side of things, Carli has qualified for the Junior National Finals Rodeo, which will be in Las Vegas beginning Dec. 6.

The Stuvas usually practice through October and then rest from practicing for awhile before they start picking it up again for their next round of rodeos, though Carli will keep preparing for her trip to Las Vegas, which is an event that only 150 girls nationwide have qualified for.

Their barn is not entirely enclosed, but it’s enclosed enough that it doesn’t get too chilly in the wintertime for the Stuvas. Just like any other sport, they make use of dummies to practice roping and understand that repetition makes you better at a skill. The life of a rodeo family never stops.

“The horses we have them on, we know they’ve competed at higher levels, so we knew they’d do well,” Heather said. “It’s a matter of getting together and making it work. We usually go till about October, there’ll be some barrel races still going on. We’ll finish up in Vegas in mid-December and then give them a break for a few months before we start back up in the spring. I think they start rodeoing the end of May.”