Rodeo team ready for season-opening home rodeo

PORTALES — The Eastern New Mexico Greyhound rodeo team held a “Mini-Rodeo/Meet the Rodeo Team” event on campus on Wednesday afternoon, as they try to promote this weekend’s College “Daze” Rodeo, which ENMU will host at Lewis Cooper Arena.

Several members of the team gave out prizes to students as they attempted to rope fake calfs, all while trying to bring attention to the upcoming rodeo, which starts tonight at 7 and runs through Saturday night.

“Every year, we have our home rodeo and we only get one per year,” senior barrel racer Samantha Smith explained. “This year, we decided that we’d tried to get more advertising coming in. A lot of the campus kids never end up showing up, because they don’t know about it or don’t know what it is.

“So, we thought a fun rodeo on campus would pull in all of the campus people and give the students a chance to win some cool prizes. There’s not necessarily fundraising — because nobody is donating, but (it’s) more of a thing to get the campus involved and let them know that the rodeo is happening and that we’d like them to come support us.”

The event also doubles as ENMU’s season debut. The historically strong program will once again be led by veteran coach Albert Flinn, now entering his fifth season.

The Greyhounds are optimistic about this year’s team, as they’re said to have strong goat-tying and roping teams. This weekend’s event gives the ‘Hounds an opportunity to see where they stand in the early going of the season, as they’ll compete against 18 other schools, including Texas Tech and Tarleton State.

Several collegiate athletes from all over Texas, plus New Mexico, will partake in Thursday and Friday’s events. Round 1 will end early Saturday, as the 160 or so competitors in each rodeo event will be whittled down to the top 10, who will square-off in the finals on Saturday night.

“We have a pretty strong team,” Smith said. “Albert’s built up the men’s team more this year, so it will be interesting to see if they have more success than they have in the past. The women’s team is always extraordinary here — we’ve won several regional titles and have been second several times, as well.

“We have one girl (Tawny Barry) returning, she’s getting her masters this year (and) she won the National College Finals in the goat-tying last year. We hope to do that again and get more people there this year.”

For Smith and company, an opportunity to get to the prestigious College National Finals Rodeo would be a dream come true. However, the journey must start somewhere, and Thursday night’s home rodeo will be the first step forward for all of the competitors.

Fellow senior Dustyn Sisneros, a team roper, certainly has aspirations of that, as he enters his fifth year with the program. The Santa Rosa-native says he’s had up-and-down success at the College “Daze” Rodeo, but is excited nonetheless.

‘Pretty exciting — home-field advantage,” Sisneros said of the event. Sisneros said he’s purchased new horses to prepare for this season, while also trying to change up his roping, as he tries to become faster and more consistent at it.

While Smith and Sisneros look to put an exclamation point on their careers, for one new team member, tonight marks his very first college rodeo.

Freshman Trey Jackson, a Colorado native, will compete in team roping with his brother Tanner. For Trey, tonight’s an exciting time, and just the opportunity to be on the team alone is a wonderful feeling.

“Albert gave me a great opportunity and I’m just excited to be here,” Trey explained. “First college rodeo, (and) I’ve looked forward to this for a lot of years. This year, we got a lot of new freshmen and transfer students, a lot of good team ropers. Looks good.”