story by Michele Toberer
American Professional Rodeo Association cowgirl, Anna Poorbaugh, hails from Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and recently won the 2019 Champion Rookie Breakaway Roper of the Year title. Although she competed in several APRA rodeos as a local during the past couple of years, 2019 was the first year buying a membership with the association, and she is grateful for the great season she had.
Nineteen-year-old Anna has grown up in the western part of Pennsylvania with her parents, Jamison and Jill Poorbaugh, and her younger sister, Audrey, who is 18 years old. Jamison manages their family beef cattle operation as well as their fencing company, Gimlet Hill Fencing; and Jill works for Penn Line Services. Audrey is currently in her first year of college in South Dakota. The family once operated a dairy farm, but in 2008 switched to raising Black Angus cross cattle. Jamison used to ride bulls, but Jill never competed in rodeo, however they were both glad to raise their daughters in the sport.
Anna graduated from Connellsville Area High School in 2018, after a hectic schoolwork load her final year, where she combined her junior and senior classes to graduate a year early. She competed in the Pennsylvania High School Rodeo Association her freshman, sophomore, and junior/senior year, earning all three national finals trips during her high school rodeo career. In 2016, Anna won the PHSRA Champion Rookie All-Around Cowgirl title, and won the 2017 PHSRA Champion All-Around Cowgirl title the next year. She competed in barrel racing, goat tying and team roping as a heeler on her bay gelding, Stink. Stink is now 14 years old, and the family purchased him as a 3-year-old, training him to be quite the all-around horse for both Anna and her sister Audrey. This past season, Anna competed on him in breakaway roping at the APRA rodeos, and Audrey qualified for high school national finals, placing 5th in the second go-round at the world championship event.
A consummate multi-tasker, Anna is currently in her second year of nursing school at Pennsylvania State University, attending a nearby branch campus so that she can live at home with her horses and work two jobs. She has worked at a local dairy, milking cows, for nearly 3 years; and has just passed her year-mark as a checker at Aldi’s. Anna will graduate with her nursing degree in 2022 and aspires to become a trauma nurse in the future. “I went to every APRA rodeo I could get off work for this season. I really enjoy the APRA rodeos and getting to see the friends that I’ve made there. Because I live in western Pennsylvania, I don’t live near many of the APRA members, so seeing them at the rodeos it’s fun to catch up.”
Breakaway roping is Anna’s favorite event, and she looks forward to the leaps and bounds the event is starting to make in the rodeo world. She hopes that one day soon her schedule will allow her more time for participation in the many qualifiers and breakaway competitions starting to be more widely available to the cowgirls of rodeo. She looks forward to her second year of membership with the APRA and hopes to finish with another title at the completion of this season.
