story by Michele Toberer
When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life, and for Mid-State Rodeo Association member, Liz Michael, she couldn’t be happier about how she spends her days. “I’m able to live my dream, training barrel horses and making my living doing what I love.” She didn’t come from a rodeo background, but as a horse crazy young girl, she pestered her parents enough to put her in riding lessons when she was 10 years old. At 15, a friend, Amanda Zoldak and her mom introduced Liz to the world of barrel racing. They let Liz ride one of their horses, a Tennessee Walker, in local 4-H shows, and she was soon hooked on the sport. Although her parents were still not especially keen on the idea of Liz riding and competing on horses, they were beginning to understand the passion their daughter felt for horses and the lifestyle that came with it.
At 24, Liz purchased a weanling colt named Famous Magnolia, and after attending several clinics to learn the skills needed to train young horses, she trained him to run barrels and competed on him at six MSRA rodeos before selling him to Tiany Schuster as a 6-year-old. Liz also owned his full sister, Phoenix, a sorrel mare she purchased as her first two-year-old futurity horse and they went on to win the BFA Amateur Futurity. Although Phoenix was only 5 and not seasoned to rodeo when Famous Magnolia sold, she waited through a couple rainy rodeos, and entered the next dry rodeo that came up. She and Phoenix won the first two rodeos they entered, and it turned out she ran even better in the mud than on dry ground. The first season running Phoenix they won all three rounds at the 2013 MSRA season finals. After selling Phoenix, Liz moved on to her next project, a 5-year-old sorrel gelding, Too Famous to Kill, who she had raised from a weanling. He won money at multiple futurities, including the Panty Raid, West Virginia Futurity, Indiana Futurity, and the BFA. “I entered the first rodeo on him, and he was like a runaway freight train, afraid of all the noise from the crowd. I tried a couple more rodeos and decided to wait until the next summer when he was 6. I entered him in the slack that summer and he started winning everything; if he didn’t win, we placed. We would have made the MSRA finals, but I hadn’t purchased my card, since I wasn’t sure how it would go. Last season I bought my MSRA card and my IPRA card and started rodeoing last June. We made the finals for both MSRA and IPRA, and we were able to win the average at the MSRA finals, also winning the 2018 MSRA Barrel Racing Champion title.”
Liz grew up near Paris, Ohio, and graduated from Marlington High School in 2001. After high school she attended Mount Union College and Bowling Green University on track scholarships. “I left college after my first year at Bowling Green. I knew all I wanted to do was something with horses, and I’m so grateful to now make my living with Paris Performance Horses. I take outside horses and I breed two or three mares each year. We also buy weanlings and raise and train them until they are ready to sell.” Liz’s boyfriend of 9 years, Rob Pochubay, works as a buyer for an industrial steel company, and although he didn’t come from an equine background, he is supportive of Liz and all she does. “Rob has gotten as obsessed as me when it comes to bloodlines, and he is always helping look for bloodlines he knows I love.” Denny Dawson has been a huge influence on Liz the past couple years and has helped her get started in futurity competitions. Liz has a 10-year-old daughter, Roslynn, that enjoys riding and runs in the peewee division at local shows occasionally.
“Sometimes I think I’d like to learn to rope or do mounted shooting, but there’s always another horse to get better at barrels, so that takes up all my time.”
