By Lori Bizzell / Photos Courtesy of Johnnie Rose Bray and Team Cavender’s
“I want that one.”
Johnnie Rose Bray had already seen the calf run twice. He was the hardest-running calf there, and she knew her horse was not especially fast.
“I knew I was going to have the hardest time roping that one,” she says. “He was the one that was going to make me work for it.”
She was in seventh grade at the Arizona state finals when she drew him.
“I was a little late, and I roped him, and I won the state. They announced it right there.”
Years later, the part she remembers most is not simply that she won.
“I was really happy that I didn’t back off.”
Now 16, Johnnie competes in breakaway, team roping, barrels, and cow horse. Breakaway is still the one she loves most.
“Breakaway, for sure.”
The speed of it suits her, but so does the quiet moment just before it begins.
“When I’m backing in the box, I take a deep breath right before I nod my head. I’m thinking, calm down, because you have to be the calm before the storm. It’s so fast and so quick and so aggressive.”
Competing in several events has also made it harder to get tangled up in a single bad run.
“If my very first event doesn’t go the way I want it to, I don’t have an option but to be ready for the next thing. It just keeps you centered.”
Her little roan cow horse, Hippo, has required his own kind of patience.
“He is like my heart and soul, and I fight with him more than I fight with my little brother.”
What he has taught her reaches past patience.
“We expect ourselves to be perfect all the time because what we do is such a knife fight of a sport. Everything we do is tough, especially at the level that it’s become. I think I put that on myself a lot, and my horses, they make mistakes too.”
That has made forgiveness part of the lesson too.
“It’s kind of like, oh, it’s okay. Mistakes are going to happen.”
Johnnie has heard about the process for most of her life because her dad has been talking to her about it since she was little.
“You have to enjoy this process. The tears, the sweat, the hard days, the laughs, the drives. The best way to describe it is the process.”
In Arizona, enjoying it can mean getting out of bed long before most people have considered opening their eyes.
“I woke up at four o’clock this morning just to go rope because Arizona is 115, and it is not a fun middle of the day.”
Her dad is one of the two men she names when I ask who has influenced her most as a competitor and as a young woman. The other is eight-time world champion Joe Beaver, whom Johnnie has grown close to over the years.
Her family is also where much of her faith has taken shape. Her dad grew up in a family that followed God, while her mom did not.
“As I became older, she’s really gotten into talking about it and being more open about it, and we have conversations about it all the time. We journal every day as a family.”
Watching her mom’s faith grow has stayed with Johnnie.
“She’s really shown me that people can change. You can fix things. You can be better than you were.”
For Johnnie, faith is not something reserved for home or Sunday morning. It goes with her into the box.
“Oh my gosh, that’s the biggest thing in my entire life. I don’t know how people that don’t have faith in the Lord do what we do because He is like my saving grace.”
Sometimes the prayer is quick enough that the people around her wonder what she is doing.
“I’m probably standing in the box with my eyes closed and people are like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m just saying a quick prayer before I back in here.’”
She has leaned on that same faith away from competition, including through shoulder problems and the stretches when things simply have not gone the way she hoped.
“Having faith in the plan that He has for you, there’s no other security like it.”
Psalm 46:5 has been Johnnie’s verse since she was about three years old: “God is within her, she will not fall.” Her mom, who owns a buckle company, made sure those words had a place on Johnnie’s buckle too.
The words she wants her life to carry are just as uncomplicated.
“Be happy and be kind and share it with as many people as I can. I don’t ever want anyone to feel scared to have a conversation with me. I want people to look at me and see she’s living. She’s a child of God.”
Johnnie is beginning her second year with Team Cavender’s, and when I ask what she wants people to see when she wears the Cavender’s name, she answers with one word.
“Respect.”
Then she tells me exactly what she means by it.
“I hope when people look at me, they think, ‘Oh my gosh, that is a very respectful young woman.’ I want to look people in the eye and shake their hand and be kind. I want to be respectful in everyone’s eyes.”
Her first year with the team came with some horse trouble that kept her from attending Summit, so this year was her first time there.
“It’s such an amazing team, and the people, there’s nothing like them. They are kind and motivating. Going to Summit this year was an unforgettable experience.”
There are some big things on Johnnie’s list now, beginning with The American.
“I’ve been so close the last two years, and I’m really hoping this is the year.”
High school nationals is there too. The last three years have brought their share of ups and downs, and she is ready to see what this one holds.
“We’re working for this to be the year.”
For all the work she puts into becoming better, Johnnie is also learning to keep what she does separate from who she is. When I ask whether she ever puts her worth in her performance, she does not give me the polished answer.
“I try not to. I definitely am not perfect, and I definitely think that sometimes it can fade into it, and I try really hard not to.”
Then she brings it back to what God has been teaching her.
“I’m not defined by what I do.”
There is plenty about Johnnie that has nothing to do with a stopwatch or a rope. She loves to bake, particularly anything sweet, and her white chocolate cheesecake takes about eight hours to make.
She also plays piano, although lessons eventually gave way to an increasingly busy life. If you happen to walk into the house while she is playing, there is a pretty good chance you will hear “Home on the Range.”
Her taste in music sounds as though it belongs to another generation altogether.
“This sounds really crazy given the fact I’m 16 and was born in 2010. Old music. Elvis.”
“Build Me Up Buttercup” reminds her of listening to music with her great grandma, “Runaround Sue” makes the list too, and there is a record player in her room to complete the picture.
On the road, potatoes in just about any form will make her happy, although Sour Skittles and Nutty Buddies are favorites too.
Then there is Rowdy, her 13-year-old brother.
“We argue. We’re three years apart, so I’m older. But he’s my ride or die. He makes me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed in my life.”
At 16, there is a lot ahead of Johnnie Rose Bray, and she already knows a few things she would rather not lose along the way.
“I hope to be loving and happy, and I hope that never gets taken away from me. I hope that I’m always the one that’s smiling. I smile and I laugh a lot, and I hope that I stay that way.”
She adds one more thing.
“Confidence. I hope my confidence never changes.”
I think Part Three actually reached material I would have saved for later. So rather than inventing a fourth section or repeating The American, identity, faith, family and personality, Part Four should deepen something we have not really explored yet: what Johnnie has learned from living in several different corners of rodeo and the people who have shaped how she approaches it.
There was never much question about what Johnnie wanted to do.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to do anything else. From day one, that’s it. That’s what I want to do.”
She tried other sports, but none of them held her for long.
“Every day I wake up and I’m like, I want to rope. When are we going to rope? What’s the plan?”
Some of her earliest memories are of going to rodeos with her dad while he competed on the circuit. One memory has managed to survive all the way from when she was three, courtesy of a horse that apparently had her own opinions about children.
“My dad had this heart horse. She was his favorite animal in the entire world, and I was like three and she bucked me off because she didn’t like kids. I will never forget that day, and I don’t know how I remember because I was three, but I remember.”
She kept riding.
These days, moving between breakaway, team roping, barrels and cow horse asks something a little different of her every time. Breakaway may have her heart, but the others have given her something she might not have learned by staying in only one lane.
She does not get the luxury of deciding that one bad moment gets the whole day.
“If it doesn’t go the way I want it to, I don’t have an option but to be ready for the next thing.”
There is always another run somewhere ahead of her, and Johnnie has spent enough time in rodeo to know that not all of them will look the way she pictured.
She also knows exactly whose voices she trusts while she is figuring it out.
“My dad, and then watching Joe Beaver. I’m really close with Joe. They are very, very impactful.”
Her dad’s words about enjoying the process have followed her from childhood into the early mornings she chooses now. Joe has given her another example to watch from someone who knows what it takes to compete at the highest level.
Johnnie is still only 16, which means much of her story has not happened yet. She has horses she is still learning, goals she has not reached and plenty of mornings when the alarm will ring earlier than she would probably prefer.
She seems just fine with that.
After all, the easy one was never the calf she wanted.
There is a lot Johnnie still wants.
The American is high on that list after coming close the last two years, and high school nationals matters to her too. She has had enough ups and downs over the last three years to know there are no guarantees attached to either one.
“I’m really hoping this is the year. We’re working for this to be the year.”
Work is something Johnnie understands. So is wanting something badly. What she is learning at 16 is where to put all of that wanting when the outcome is no longer hers to decide.
“Having faith in the plan that He has for you, there’s no other security like it.”
That security leaves room for ambition without asking ambition to carry the weight of her identity.
“I’m not defined by what I do.”
It is a simple sentence for something that can take a lifetime to learn, particularly in a sport where fractions of a second can change a result and everyone can see whether the rope caught.
Johnnie still wants to win. She still wants the fast calf, the big stage and the chance to find out how good she can become. She also wants people to feel comfortable walking up and talking to her. She wants to look them in the eye, shake their hand and treat them with respect. She wants her life to make it easy for someone else to see Who she belongs to.
“I want people to look at me and see she’s living. She’s a child of God.”
There will be plenty of time for Johnnie to find out where rodeo takes her. For now, she is still the girl getting up before daylight to rope, laughing with Rowdy, baking an eight-hour cheesecake, playing old songs on the piano and closing her eyes for a quick prayer before she backs into the box.
She knows what she hopes remains when she is older and more doors have opened.
“I hope to be loving and happy, and I hope that never gets taken away from me. I hope that I’m always the one that’s smiling. I smile and I laugh a lot, and I hope that I stay that way. And confidence. I hope my confidence never changes.”
There will always be another hard-running calf somewhere.
Johnnie will probably want that one.
And just before she nods, she will take a breath.
