JHSRA member, Sierra Schemper
– Jill Saults
story by Ruth Nicolaus
Sierra Schemper is in her final year of competition in the Nebraska Junior High School Rodeo Association.
The fourteen year old cowgirl who lives in Holdrege, Neb., competes in the poles, barrels, goat tying, and runs for Ty Bass in the ribbon roping.
She rides three different horses. Bartender is her goat tying horse. The six year old is very mature for his age, she says, so mature her little sister can ride him. Her pole horse, Mikey, is her favorite. The thirteen year old is the horse that “got me going fast,” she said. “He helped me get better (at riding) and I helped him, in a way.” Mikey is coming off a fracture and bone chip injury and was just cleared to ride this past March.
Her barrel horse, Sis, has an interesting story. She was for sale for the right price at a local horse sale, and Sierra’s grandpa, Gene Wyckoff, liked her coloring, so he bought her. Then the family discovered she had been abused. “She wasn’t very trusting,” Sierra said, and from her behavior, they have deduced she was whipped repeatedly. It took Sierra’s grandpa over a year to saddle and bridle her. Sis trusts Sierra and her grandpa, but with her mom, “there’s tension between them.” Sierra just began training her for barrels this spring.
She is an eighth grade student at Holdrege Middle School, where she keeps busy with volleyball, basketball and track. Outside of school, she plays soccer and does gymnastics and dance. Her favorite sports are basketball, where she plays post, pole vaulting in track, and doing the vault in gymnastics. In late April, she was ranked as the number one pole vaulter in Nebraska among junior high girls.
Sierra loves math class but is not crazy about band, where she plays the clarinet. Her mom and dad have required her to take band through middle school, but she doesn’t plan on continuing it next year. She enjoys choir and art classes, and her favorite teacher is Mrs. Anderson, her math teacher, who has helped her improve her math. Sierra wasn’t ever bad at math, but Mrs. Anderson has really helped her progress.
When she grows up, she’d like to be a personal trainer and help people become healthier.
Sierra has qualified for the state finals in all of her events in both the sixth and seventh grades.
She has three younger sisters and a younger brother. Samantha, age twelve, also rodeos in the NJHSRA. Sabrina is ten, Sophia is six, and Sawyer, the boy, is three. Sawyer never lacks for a playmate or someone to entertain him.
She is the daughter of Dawn and Jared Schemper.
