Dust off your boots and cowboy hats: the rodeo returns to Flagstaff this weekend

Kyle Anticevich, Laura Gonzales, Kristen Dalton, Mike Hughes and Bau Foy (left to right) stand inside the Marshall W. Knoles Memoral Arena at Fort Tuthill Tuesday morning, where preparations are underway for the upcoming Flagstaff Rodeo. The rodeo will take place Thursday-Saturday, June 8-10, at the arena.

A roaring crowd peppered with cowboy hats will return to the grandstands at Fort Tuthill County Park on Thursday for the 2023 Flagstaff Pro Rodeo.

People attend the rodeo for a number of reasons: the adrenaline rush of watching a man battle a bull, one-handed for eight seconds; the excitement of seeing a grown person dive off a horse to capture a steer by the horns; the anticipation of a catch each time a rope rolls through the air.

"It's just so different from all of the other events in Flagstaff. It's just something that brings our heritage together," said Kristen Daulton. "So many different kinds of people enjoy rodeo. It's not one category. It's kind of everybody. It's family friendly. It's date night friendly. You can come out with your friends, it works for everybody."

For her, the appeal of rodeo feels universal. That's why, 10 years ago, Daulton started out on a journey to bring horses and steers, sheep and bulls back to the center of the arena at Fort Tuthill.

In 2012 she filled out the paperwork to found the Flagstaff Pro Rodeo. In 2014, with the help of a brand-new rodeo committee, she spearheaded the production of the first rodeo Flagstaff had seen in half a decade.

"It's been a heck of a journey -- from people saying we couldn't do it to absolutely packing the house and winning best event in Flagstaff last year," Daulton said.

That first year, the arena needed quite a bit of TLC to play host to a Professional Rodeo Cowboy's Association (PRCA) sanctioned event.

It had sat largely unused after the Pine Country Pro Rodeo dissolved, but Daulton's team quickly got to work bringing the grandstands, bucking shoots and alleys up to their standards.

"The very first year that we started, we came out here and the grass back there was to our hips," said Laura Gonzalez, pointing to the corrals behind the chutes. She has been a member of the volunteer rodeo committee since the beginning. "We as a committee cut it all down, racked it all out, pulled all the weeds. That stuff up there was full of bats and birds; we brought it back to something."

Today, the care that Daulton's team takes in preparing the arena has earned the Flagstaff Pro Rodeo several national awards.

In 2017 and 2019, Flagstaff Pro Rodeo won the Justin Boots’ and Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) Best Footing Award. All of the professional female athletes in rodeo — barrel racers and breakaway ropers get to vote on the arenas that provide the best footing for their equine partners. Better footing leads to safer rides and faster, record-setting times for competitors.

That's why the Flagstaff Pro Rodeo has the composition and surfacing of their arena ground down to a science. They’ve collected 35 samples of the clay and sand that mix to form the arena's dirt base to a lab at "Safe Arena Footing."

"They engineer it and tell you what you have to add to it to have the right moisture, the right consistency," Daulton said. "We put a lot of pride into our ground. We want everybody to be safe. We want all the horses and the riders to not have any slips and be able to compete to the best of their abilities, and we’re able to do that to the best of our ability. This year we brought in some additional dirt and we try to keep the ground consistency right so that it holds for those fast times."

The whoosh and rumble of a pressure washer was the loudest sound at the rodeo grounds on Tuesday, as Northern Arizona Power Washing helped clean up walkways, bleachers and grandstands, clearing any accumulated mud and muck so that everything looks "top-notch and rodeo ready," as Daulton puts it. The power washing job alone takes two days.

"It certainly takes a lot to put on this event," she adds.

That's one of the reasons why rodeo, at the end of the day, is by and for the community.

Daulton said there are about 50 people on the rodeo committee that work on logistics and planning January through June. It takes 100 volunteers to run the event on rodeo weekend.

Gonzalez said she's never once gotten to watch the Flagstaff Pro Rodeo. She's too busy working the event, making sure that the Colorado Kool-Aid is flowing and the vendors have everything they need.

In many ways, Daulton explained, the committee works from a place of love for their community — thinking of the rodeo as a kind of experiential gift they can give.

"I feel like our entire committee is totally onboard, that we were put here to give back. The more we can give back and serve our community, that's why we’re here doing this," she said.

One event designed specifically for community participation is the "mutton busting." Based loosely on other rough-stock sports, mutton busting offers Flagstaff Pro Rodeo's pint-sized spectators to become participants themselves. Each night, 20 sheep will be released, with a child 8 years of age or younger hanging on for dear life.

Mutton Busting offers an opportunity to local kids to get a taste for rodeo and earn sponsor-donated prizes. Interested parents can sign up their little cowboys and cowgirls at the Royalty Booth when they enter each evening's performance.

Another event that makes Flagstaff Pro Rodeo special is especially near and dear to Daulton's heart. It's her sport of choice: Mounted Shooting.

"It's just an exciting sport where cowboys and cowgirls ride horses and shoot six shooters off their horses with black powder blanks. They have to hit 10 targets in a timed event. Missing a balloon is a five-second penalty, knocking over a barrel is a five-second penalty. There's all kinds of variables out there as well as a screaming crowd to just hype up all the horses and the riders," she said.

This year's rodeo promises to include all of the fan-favorite PRCA-sanctioned events: Calf or Tie Down Roping, Bare Back riding, Steer Wrestling, Saddle Bronc, Team Roping, Barrel Racing and Bull Riding. Some of the athletes might even be familiar to rodeo fans.

As the Flagstaff Rodeo has grown, so has its reputation. Now the event attracts world-class cowboys and cowgirls to compete in their chosen sport.

In the past, renowned barrel racers like Fallon Taylor and Sherry Cervi have chased the fastest time in the Coconino County area. This year, Rocker Steiner, the third-ranked (meaning at this moment, the third highest earning) bareback rider in the world, is planning to ride in this weekend's event.

As Flagstaff Pro Rodeo continues to establish itself as a gem on the Turquoise Circuit, Daulton has had to rethink scheduling a bit this year. Historically, rodeo weekend in Flagstaff comes at the end of June. This year it was moved up, and shifted to Thursday through Sunday to reduce overlap with other big rodeos and encourage the best athletes who compete individually, to come to this part of the north country.

In addition to the new dates, fans can expect to see a brand-new professional rodeo event in the arena. Women in rodeo have long had to lean into barrel racing if they wanted to compete in the WPRA. This year you’ll see the ladies running barrel patterns, but you’ll also notice women swinging ropes in Break Away Roping competitions.

A Break Away roper will swing their loop in hopes of catching a calf (or goat) around the neck. Unlike in calf roping, however, their rope will break away from where it's tied to the saddle. The contestant who most quickly catches their critter wins the event.

Rodeo weekend will wrap up with an arena dance, featuring live band Western Fusion after the dust settles from the very last bull ride on Saturday night.

Sierra Ferguson can be reached at [email protected].

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Staff Reporter

Sierra Ferguson comes to the Daily Sun from the world of TV news where she worked as a reporter, anchor and producer in Florida and California. She was born in Flagstaff, and loves everything about her hometown from its bustling downtown to its towering Ponderosa Pines.

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