story by Siri Stevens
Braylee Shepherd won the Utah Junior High School All Around and she is making the 26 hour drive to Tennessee. “We’ve gone 15 hours today,” she said from Texas. “We are going to stop at Ft. Smith, Arkansas, tomorrow.” She is making the family road trip with her mom, Marni, her dad, Kiley, her baby sister, who is 1, Zadee, and her older brother, Tate, who is 16. Tate works as a pickup man for Rockin B Rodeo company. She has another brother, Bowdee, 19, who stayed home to take care of the animals. The family has around 60 horses at the place that they train. They also have goats, dogs, chickens, geese, and cattle.
This is the first trip to Tennessee for the Shepherd family – it’s the first trip south of Las Vegas. Braylee qualified for the National Junior High Finals in three events – barrel racing, pole bending, and breakaway roping, and competes in all the events, including team roping, ribbon roping, and goat tying “It’s going to be a good experience,” said the 12-year-old from Nephi, Utah. Braylee has competed since she was young, claiming her favorite event is breakaway. “It’s fun and gets your heart rate up when the chute opens.” This is her second year in the Utah Junior High School Rodeo Association. “I came in sitting in the middle last year – and then this year I thought I needed to kick it in gear and put a little more time into it.”
Braylee came into the Utah Junior High finals this year in reserve for the All Around spot. “I had an awesome state finals and that bumped me up. I was 30 points behind and I jumped up to first,” she said. She handles the pressure of rodeo by staying to herself. “I do what I have to do and hopefully it works out.”
She will be an eighth grader next year and enjoys having the summer off to rodeo. She is bringing two horses to Tennessee. “I rope off Carmel and I run barrels and poles off of Choice.” She has had Choice for two years and Carmel for ten years now. “My dad and my family rode horses and rodeoed and my dad’s a trainer – he trains horses and shoes them and he trained both of my horses.” Braylee is dedicated to practice. “I try to fit all the events in – one or two a day, or sometimes all of them. Now that it’s summertime, I have enough time to practice everything.” She practices at the house, and her dad is happy to help her – opening the chute or holding the goats.
Kiley competed in all three rough stock events and now trains barrel horses and shoes horses. “Braylee makes it easy to quit what I’m doing and go help her. She’s self-motivated. That’s all she does. She’s a hard worker – she has friends, but all she does is practice. I look up to her for as hard as she works.”
Her mom oversees the school lunch program for Juab school district. Although she rides, she never competed in rodeo. “We must love it, I married a rodeo guy and all my kids have done it – it’s our lifestyle,” she says of rodeo. She’s very proud of Braylee. “She practices morning and night – she’s very dedicated. She had it in her head and set some goals and that motivated her.”
When she grows up, Braylee wants to train barrel horses. For this summer, she is excited to compete in Tennessee. “You have to work hard to be the best. If you’re not practicing someone else is. All the work I put into it paid off.”
