story by Ruth Nicolaus
Raesha Warren
– JJJ Photo
Raesha Warren is a barrel racer, breakaway roper and goat tyer in the Nebraska Junior High School Rodeo Association.
The fourteen year old cowgirl, a resident of Thedford, Neb., loves all three of her events and has been barrel racing the longest.
For the barrels, she rides a seventeen year old bay roan horse, Scruffy, who loves it when Raesha talks to him. When she goes to the corral to catch him, he’ll walk away from her. But as soon as she says, “Scruffy, we’re going to go do barrels,” he walks right over. “He knows,” she says. “He’s smart.”
Scruffy is also her goat tying horse, and for the breakaway, she rides a fourteen year old sorrel named Amigo, who the family has owned for about three months. He’s solid in the breakaway, she says, and really fast.
As an eighth grade student, Raesha is homeschooled. She loves history class, but math is not her thing. She attends her church’s youth group on Wednesday nights, and is a member of the Thomas County Achievers 4-H club, where she made a grass identification book last year and has done some sewing, including a skirt with purple and pink fabric and purple diamonds.
The Warren family has two pet goats and a dog, and Raesha loves to play with them. Her goats, B.J. and B.B., love to be put on a leash like a dog. They’ll drag her, instead of her walking them. The family has a humorous name for it: running with the goats. They also have a Great Pyrenees named Daisy who loves to go sledding with the Warren kids. Once she tried to get on the sled, but nearly tipped it over. She loves to play with the cats, who aren’t scared of her. She’ll lick them clean. Daisy likes to move cows, too, and will follow Raesha and her sisters wherever they go. “She likes to be with us all the time.”
Raesha, whose name is pronounced “RAY sha”, was named after her grandpa’s grandma. When she grows up, she’d like to barrel race at the Wrangler National Finals and do acupuncture and chiropractic work on horses. The person she admires most in the rodeo world is world champion Tuf Cooper. “I like that he always gives all the glory to God,” she says.
She has two younger sisters: Emma, eleven, and Ella, age six. She has competed at the state junior high finals both years.
