story by Michele Toberer
The travel of rodeo keeps Kade Jacobs going through the many miles of his work as a sales representative. Never one to let the grass grow under his boots, the 25-year-old steer wrestler from Lehi, Utah, competes in the RMPRA while also traveling two or three weeks at a time working for Serratelli Hat Company. “Going down the road and doing the job I do gets a little lonely sometimes, so to come home and see my horses keeps me sane,” explains Kade, who’s rodeoed in the RMPRA for the last 8–10 years. “I travel all over 26 states and 3 provinces in Canada, and I get to meet a lot of cool people and see the world. Canada is really cool and the people are super friendly, and there’s always good cooking down in Louisiana. I’ve got a girlfriend, Mallory, and she is awesome and takes care of the horses for me when I’m gone.”
Kade’s rodeo travels keep him mostly in Utah with the RMPRA, while he hopes to also rodeo in the PRCA in the future. His interest in rodeo took root in eighth grade after he was upgraded from chute help to a competitor. “I wanted to be a baseball player until eighth grade, and then I started chute dogging, but I didn’t like it because I was always chute help,” Kade says with a laugh. He’s the youngest of one brother and three sisters who all rodeoed, along with his parents and grandparents. “I look up to my mom, Karen. She’s always there to help out, and my brother, Kody, who’s 10 years older than me. When he was learning to bulldog, I was a young buck getting in the way, and we watch the NFR and critique everyone’s runs.”
Along with steer wrestling, Kade competed in team roping and tie-down roping through junior high and high school, and qualified for the NHSFR and Silver State twice. “Steer wrestling has been my thing. It’s a little bit more of an adrenaline rush, and I’m kind of a bigger guy, so I like to show off a bit of muscle when I can. But once in a while I get the itch to go calf rope.” His steer wrestling horse since his freshman year of high school is Frankenstein, now 19. “I trained him. He was an old team roping horse that wouldn’t rate steers. I didn’t know what I was doing and he didn’t know what he was doing, so we clicked and learned together.” Kade plans to transition Frankenstein over to hazing eventually, and is training several younger horses in the meantime. “I don’t like to use my hands when I ride, so I use my feet as much as I can, and the biggest thing I look for is being calm in the box. If a horse is blowing up in the box, they lose their focus with the steer. I picked one horse up off the track, and instead of going to the box, I put it in a snaffle bit. I’ll go back to the basics and then work him up.”
In between horses and travel, Kade enjoys golfing and working out at the gym. “I’m really motivated by myself. I like to say, ‘If you feel good, then you look good and you do good.’ And it’s motivating to watch these young horses grow up to be like my old horse Frankenstein. I like the way the RMPRA runs their rodeos,” he adds. “They’re usually pretty consistent, and especially if you have younger horses, you can be up in different perfs if you want to and you don’t have to hit huge shows.” He’s qualified for the RMPRA finals several times and plans to return again, along with buying his PRCA permit. “When I do, I want to go hard so I can go for rookie of the year.”
