Queening

I have officially been introduced into the world of "Queening". Having no prior experience or knowledge of the rodeo queen world other than occasionally seeing a western clad girl sitting atop her horse in our annual 4th of July parade and thinking I bet she is warm in that outfit, I volunteered to help my fellow co-worker Amanda with the local queen contest.

Amanda has never run a queen contest, but she does have a lot more knowledge about the entire situation than I do. However, I am pretty good at organization and moral support so we put together a contest for 26 girls ages 2-19, and what a day it was.

We began at 8:00 am with registration and by 9:00 we had 3 no shows. Not too much of a problem. We had the "Pee-Wee" competition first. There were 3 girls age 2-4 that answered a few questions and rode a stick horse for the judges, they all won a tiara, buckle, sash, bag of treats and got to keep their stick horses. It was adorable.

We then moved on to the interviews. Things were going smoothly until one of the judges got a call that her husband had "wrecked" his horse and may have broken his leg. Mind you she lives an hour away and had ridden with the other judges. She called her mom and she & I headed north while her mom headed south. Luckily we got the mom of the reining queen to fill in. Crisis averted.

Then the reining queens horse began to colic. Caught it early and another crisis averted. Then things began to flow. I had the opportunity to sit in on interviews and learned some interesting things. I didn't know a Rodeo Queen never removes her hat, for obvious reasons I suppose. It pays to draw a late number, especially if your fellow contestants choose to discuss the questions they were asked. Even though the judges mixed it up a little, there is no way to come up with 150 + different questions with similar answer potential.

Horsemanship was so much fun. I loved watching the mini girls ages 9-13 do their figure 8's in the arena, they were so adorable. The junior and senior girls did great as well, they looked beautiful. We presented the awards and all of the mini girls recieved a tiara, buckle and treats. They were so thrilled even if they didn't get a sash. The junior and senior royalties recieved some awesome prizes that we had a blast picking out.

All in all it was a long and fun day. There were a lot of positive comments, and as of yet no complaints. Not too bad for a couple of girls with no experience :)