The EWJRA (Eastern Washington Junior Rodeo Association) put on a season opener rodeo clinic Saturday and rodeo Sunday, Levi has been wanting to mutton bust again but he is too big now and he wants to rope. So we looked around and found this rodeo clinic and decided to sign him up for a couple things so they could teach him the correct way and he could decide if he wanted to continue. We signed him up for goat flanking, dummy roping, and calf riding (the next step up from mutton bustin).
The class for goat flanking was broke up into two parts, ground work and horse back. We don't have a horse ready for him to be able to use so he only participated in the ground work and watched the horse back portion.
Then we moved onto dummy roping practice
The bucking barrel was a main gathering place for the pee wee boys all day long, they would help each other with pointers and critique and of course teasing and joking around with each other.
The best pointers he got though was from the actual training class where one of the high school bull riders (Cameron) came over and worked one on one with Levi.
We borrowed some safety equipment and waited for his calf.... which ended up going to someone else when they shifted livestock in the chutes. So Levi ended up steer riding instead of calf riding.
By the end of the day Saturday he decided he was going to sign up for the rodeo season and become a EWJRA member, he is going to dummy rope and calf ride. We came back Sunday so he could dummy rope in the rodeo, they go by catch, distance, and then by points if there is a tie on distance. He made a couple rounds but eventually lost out, but being that he only really started roping the day before... he did pretty good and we are so proud of him.
We decided that he didn't have to calf ride Sunday since we did not have any of the required safety gear that correctly fit him. The next rodeo he will be all outfitted and ready in Davenport, WA.
