A titleholder once more

Nov 10

Written By Julia .

After a not so brief hiatus from the rodeo queen world, I am happy to announce that I have a title for one more year.

After coming first runner up for Miss Rodeo California 2022 Pageant last October, I wondered if that would be the end to my rodeo queen journey. I’ll admit that it while it was disappointing to not walk away with the title, it really stung that I would never get the opportunity to compete for a state title again, or ever walk across the Miss Rodeo America stage as a contestant. Unfortunately in the rodeo queen world, at the age of 26, I am almost aged out of every rodeo queen title. While Miss Rodeo USA is still an option, I just started a new job in San Francisco in April, and traveling across the country to attend rodeos was just not feasible for the next year or two. So I took my horse to hang out in pasture up in Idaho, I didn’t ride since the MRC pageant last fall, and I got settled into my life living in a new city.

But it felt like something was missing, and I realized it was horses and rodeo. So I started to look for rodeo queen contests that I would still be eligible for, as I could still attend rodeos in the state of California on the weekend. This past summer it was announced that the Grand National Rodeo was returning to Cow Palace in October, after not having an in-person rodeo the last two years for the pandemic. However, I wasn’t sure if they were going to have a rodeo queen. So I contacted the outgoing queen, the coordinator and kept my eyes peeled for any information if they were going to have royalty for the next year. Because not only is it a historic rodeo, but its based in my new city of San Francisco, and it would allow me to represent my new hometown. Finally, I got the confirmation that they were going to have royalty this year, but because they were limited on time, there would be no contest and instead just a judged application.

To be perfectly honest, I think a judged application is more difficult than a contest. At least with a normal pageant, you have a feeling for how you are doing in each event, and an idea of how the other contestants are doing. But with just an application, you have no idea how the results may fall. I was very glad I had worked on my application with a coach for MRC, and could utilize that to build out this application. It must have worked because

I was crowned Miss Grand National Rodeo Queen 2023!

I am so excited to represent Cow Palace and the Grand National Rodeo this next year. I have already started attending events, and adding events to my calendar, as well as some bucket list rodeos that I want to attend in California.

While I may not have walked away with the state title, I can still represent my title throughout the state and I get the opportunity to spend one more year doing what I love: representing rodeo, and promoting rodeo queens.