Published: May 05, 2008 11:29 am         

40-year barrel racers recalls memories in rodeo competitions

For rodeo queen candidates, outfits are a big part of competition.

Sadie Shellenberger never forgot her favorite rodeo costume. The blouse was purple with sequins and the pants were a shiny silver with sequined designs. She made them both herself when she was a rodeo performer.

Shellenberger, 77, was one of a group of seniors from Pecan Tree Rehabilitation and Health Care Center who watched the first performance of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce Rodeo Thursday night.

The center’s activity director Terrie Weaver brought the residents to the event.

Shellenberger said she started competing in rodeos more than 50 years ago.

“I started running barrels in 1950, and I just got really excited about it,” she said.

Her boyfriend bought her a horse she named Gypsy, and her father got her a saddle.

“He paid it out on time,” Shellenberger said.

She rode Gypsy, a white horse with a black mane and a black tail, for about five years.

When she married her first husband, Bill Lacy, she got a new horse.

“Rowdy was my husband’s horse,” Shellenberger recalled.

She said she and Rowdy competed in rodeos around the country and often won their events.

She also won the rodeo queen title many times over.

One year, she was queen of two rodeos — The Denton County Rodeo and the Fort Worth Rodeo, she said.

She also competed in many of Gainesville’s rodeos.

Shellenberger said becoming a rodeo queen requires more than being able to ride a horse while looking pretty.

“You have to dress up really nice. You have to show good horsemanship. You have to make up a routine and perform it in the arena for the judges. You’re judged on your riding and your turns and on how you handle and interact with your horse,” she said.

Creating the right costume was important to the young women vying for rodeo queen.

Their outfits were almost always handmade. Seamstresses applied sequined patterns onto the blouses and pants which were designed to be showy and to catch the arena’s bright lights.

Shellenberger said rodeo was a passion for her entire family.

Her sister made some of her costumes and traveled the rodeo circuit with her. Her husband was a bull rider who tried his luck in venues across the county.

“Before I met him he had already competed all over. He rode bulls at Madison Square Garden and his picture was in a lot of newspapers,” she said.

Her son, Rhett Shellenberger, was a champion in the calf scramble — a contest in which a small calf is released into the arena amid a crowd of eager kids all of which try to snag a ribbon tied to the animal’s tail. The winner is the one who manages to remove the ribbon. The prize is usually a silver belt buckle.

Shellenberger said she taught Rhett early that the best way to win the event is to approach the contest with restraint.

“I taught my son to stay back and not to run toward the calf. When you run at the calf, it scares him and he takes off. At the start, everybody else would head toward the calf, and Rhett would be out in front waiting to catch him,” she said. “My son won a lot of belt buckles that way.”

Her daughter Shelly “didn’t ride that much,” she said. “But when she did, she did really well. One time she won three buckles in one afternoon.”

Rodeo competition also gave Shellenberger a chance to meet some stars of the sport.

“I knew all the bull riders,” she said.

She and her daughter also met singing cowboy and B-movie star Gene Autry at a rodeo.

“We got to shake his hand,” Shellenberger said.

She remembers Autry seemed amiable enough.

Her daughter Shelly apparently did not share her mother’s enthusiasm for the former Tioga resident known for songs such as “Back in the Saddle Again,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

“My daughter took a look at him and said, “Oh, I wanted to meet Roy Rogers,” Shellenberger said, smiling.

She said she grew up on a ranch near Dallas. Competitions took her all over Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

“I competed for 40 years,” she said.

Shellenberger watches professional bull riding on television and likes to talk about her rodeo days including the time she was the president of the Texas Barrel Racing Association.

Watching Gainesville’s rodeo brought back memories, she said.

The sport has changed little over the years.

A good run still means riding one’s horse around and between a set of barrels without knocking any barrels over.

Shellenberger said her scores varied, but were usually in the 14 to 17-second range.

Barrel racing is a partnership between rider and horse which requires a lot of practice and a certain amount of self-confidence and showmanship.

When she started in the sport, Shellenberger admits she didn’t know much about it.

“I was a self-taught barrel racer. The first time I saw someone doing it, I decided I just had to try it,” she said.

Reporter Delania Trigg may be

contacted at dtrigg@ntin.net