Author: Siri Stevens

“Glory be to God – it’s a big thank you to Him – everything in my life is thanks to Him. I’m stronger in my faith and my relationship than I’ve ever been and I want to continue that.”

Karissa Rayhill was raised in Martin, South Dakota, on a farm and ranch. Besides the normal things found in a small town; banks, a post office, churches, and schools, Martin sports a sale barn, a bowling alley and a casino just east of town. Karissa spent most of her spare time on a horse or a tractor, helping her dad and grandpa with cattle or crops. “We worked hard doing what had to be done,” she said. “Our dad (Kory) taught us how to do it all, from pulling calves to grinding hay. My grandparents lived down the road, so we spent a lot of time there and being part of their lives. We played sports in school, and we had friends, but we lived in the boonies, and we always had a good time out there.” Her most heartfelt memories were at home in the practice pen with her parents (Kory and Angela) and grandparents (Rodney and Lawonda).

Dinnertime was almost always spent together around the table talking about the day. Kaitlyn, 29; Kyler, 27; Karissa, 23, and Keisha, 21, grew up like most farm kids. “They worked on the farm and spent the evenings practicing,” said Kory, who calf roped, team roped, and steer wrestled when he was younger. “That taught them a good work ethic.”

Karissa played volleyball, but eventually turned all her attention to rodeo, thanks to her older sister, Kaitlyn, who got her interested. The journey began with the Sandhills Barrel Racing Association and 4-H rodeos. “From there we went into high school and SDRA, and that all led to college rodeo.” During the summer, they were gone every weekend to rodeos. Sometimes it was the whole family, but Kyler only rodeoed a year, so he’d stay home and help with the chores. Once Karissa got older, Kaitlyn didn’t rodeo, but Keesha continued. “Mom and dad were almost always there as well as my grandparents.”

Karissa earned a spot at the National High School Finals twice (2015, 2017), winning the goat tying in the South Dakota High School Association as well as the 4-H Finals, setting an arena record for two years. “I got multiple state titles in goats and barrels mostly. I also did well in breakaway and almost made it to the National Finals in poles and breakaway but was one hole out.” Her accomplishments have resulted in several saddles as well as a trailer and hundreds of buckles. She owes much of her success to her sister. “My sister was in high school, and I drove myself to be as good as she was,” she recalls. “I would actually make a great run during practice and shed a few tears that I wasn’t going fast enough. I was so driven to be as good as those older girls. I grew to love it and it’s always been rewarding to me.”

Karissa chose Eastern Wyoming College to continue her education. “It was close to home and both my parents came to Torrington. I love it here – it’s small and ag-related; I know most of the people in school. It was God’s plan to bring me here to meet Brock.”

Brock Gotschall, who just turned 28, proposed to Karissa at the final Central Rocky Mountain regional rodeo in Laramie, Wyo. He owns a welding company in Torrington and the proposal made a great ending to Karissa’s third year of college rodeo; she left with three titles and a diamond ring. The couple has a 14-month-old daughter, Silva. Karissa took a year off of college to concentrate on becoming a mother. “I don’t regret one bit of that. It was the best thing I could have done.” She still had the goal of winning, and knew that rodeo would still be there after her baby was born. She worked for Brock, helping him build his business, and she was able to see the other side of things – the not entering side. Her younger sister was still college rodeoing and Karissa went to support her from the stands. “I got to watch how people handled themselves and pushed themselves. I also was able to help other girls with goat tying.” It lit a fire under her to get back in shape. “It put a passion in me to win; it wasn’t easy to say the least. Throughout the summer she went with her sister to some rodeos in the amateur circuit. “I struggled with confidence, and I wasn’t in great shape,” she admitted. “I knew I wanted to come back to school, and I actually had a hard time for a bit, I’m not going to lie. Once I went back to school, I hit the gym and put my mind in a place to build confidence. I had to be religious about my workouts – that’s all there is to it.”She also had to focus on her horses to make sure they were in the best shape and be the best they could be. She has six horses in her string. Her goat tying horse is also her breakaway horse. “Teepee is nine this year and I broke and trained her,” said Karissa. “My grandpa picked her out; she came from Tom O’Grady in northern South Dakota. She was supposed to be my grandpa’s horse, but after I won my first goat tying in college, he let me have her.” Karissa’s good goat horse, Doris, died from cancer. “In 2019, the year when I was going to CNFR, she had a big lump on the side of her face. We were trying to figure out what it was, and she had gotten some pretty bad rope burns so I wasn’t going to use her except for the short go. I used my barrel horse up to the short go.”

Her barrel horse, Vegas, came from the Fall Extravaganza sale in Phillip. “I was about 10 and I told my dad he was the one. I still have the number tag from when we bought him. We got him for a great price and from the first day we got him, he was gentle. My dad sent him to some guys to ride, and it took nothing to get him going. We picked him up and stopped at a pasture to get some cows in. I jumped on him bareback with a halter and got the cows in. He’s 13 this year.”

Kory has ridden Vegas on several occasions on the ranch. “One blizzard, I had to pull a calf out of a crazy heifer,” he said. “We couldn’t get her in, and Vegas was the only horse in the barn, so I saddled him up and roped that cow and pulled the calf in the middle of the blizzard. Karissa can do about anything she wants to on him.” Kory recognizes the gift Karissa has with horses. “She knows them,” he said. “She can read them and figure out what they are thinking.”
Silva goes with Karissa from the practice pen to the rodeos to the gym. “She’s been many miles in her 14 months. My mom has been great help, and Brock comes when he can,” she said. “The rodeo family makes it easy to have little kids running around – I struggled with some sick days, but my mom would come through. And of course, Brock – he’s a great dad. I trusted and had faith that it was going to be fine and it was.”
“I’m going to bust my butt to do the best I can,” said Karissa of preparing for the CNFR. She took a few days off after regional finals to let her horses rest, but she’s back working harder than ever to prepare. “I want to make the goal I’ve had for a long time – winning the goat tying at the CNFR.” Karissa has goals beyond rodeo. “On a bigger scale, I want to be a better person, to have a better relationship with God. As a role model, I need to spread that and encourage others. I want to use that relationship with God to help others. Winning the CNFR would be amazing, but there are bigger things, and I have learned that with age.”

Karissa has a passion to teach others what she has learned about goat tying and horsemanship. She is putting on a clinic right before the CNFR, expecting 10 girls to come. “We work on building and/or correcting the fundamentals.”

As far as the future. “I’ll continue to pursue training horses and helping others. As of right now, I’d like to go back to college, but I have a responsibility to take care of. Life is crazy and things happen all the time. It’s God’s plan and I am trying to listen to what He is telling me to do.”

“I try to keep things simple,” he said about riding bucking horses and life in general. “It’s only as hard as you make it, and the windshield is always bigger than the rear-view mirror. I get up and do whatever I’ve got for the day and try not to make life any more difficult than it needs to be.” Jesse looks at rodeo as a competition with himself. “What everyone else does, I can’t control, the only thing I can control is what I do on the animal I’m given.”

Jesse Pope has lived in the foothills outside Waverly, Kan., since he was four. “It’s cowboy country – it’s where I like to be,” said the 23-year-old who lives on a farm with his mom, Jennifer; dad, Bret; and two younger brothers, Ty (20) a sophomore at Missouri Valley College, and Judd (16) a sophomore at Waverly High School. “Growing up, we rode each other and bucked each other off – we just wanted to be cowboys, no other ideas in life.” Today all three are cowboys – “that’s about the only thing we are good at.”

His parents run some cows and his dad is an automotive technician and instructor at Flint Hills Technical college. “He loves it,” said Jesse. “He works with juniors and seniors and likes giving back to the industry. My younger brother, Judd, will start the program in the fall.” His mom works for the Social Security Administration in Kansas City.

Jesse started rodeo in first grade – he got on sheep, then calves, and went from there to bulls. Jesse competed in all three rough stock events in high school. “Where I started, there was an older man (George Steinberger) who had a weekly practice and put on two schools a year. He started several guys in bareback and bull riding. When I was a little kid, he always said I was going to go to school at Missouri Valley. I had no idea what that was, but it’s kind of funny how things work out.” George passed away in 2017. “I learned a lot from that guy – he taught me how to be a man, morals, and what it meant to be a Christian – he was probably one of the most perfect humans I’ve ever met.” George was right about Jesse’s future college plans. He earned a scholarship to Missouri Valley College where he settled on bareback riding. “Coach (Ken Mason) told me it was up to me to ride whatever event – so I focused on bareback – to focus in on one craft was better than trying to be great at all three.” His talent through high school in the bareback riding was evident; 2015 NLBRA World Champion Bareback Rider; 2016 National High School Champion Bareback Rider and the 2017 IFYR National Bareback Champion. “I was always the best at it.”

Ty and Judd competed right along with Jesse and the family spent many weekends hauling up and down the road. “It hasn’t always been berries and cherries, but we did it,” said Jennifer. “The handful of times we left empty handed were pretty somber rides home.” We learned from each experience, what can we work on, and what can we do better next time. They competed in the JBR-Junior Bulls & Broncs, driving down Saturday to rodeos in Oklahoma, and coming home after the rodeo was over. “We had to come home to take care of bottle calves or whatever we had to do around here.” Jennifer is used to driving – her job requires driving 77 miles from her driveway to the Federal parking lot.

The boys did the after-school program; Bret worked closer so he could pick them up and bring them home. When Jesse turned 14, he could drive with his farm permit, so he would bring his brother’s home. “We were pretty ornery and hard on each other,” said Jesse. “We were boys, and we were wild. We hunted, wrestled, and fought, but it was all in fun and we gave each other a hug after.” They hunted anything that would move – squirrels, racoons, birds. “We weren’t very successful at it, but we tried. Ty still hunts, we grew up coon hunting and that’s my favorite thing to do. I don’t have time to sit in a deer stand.” He and his brothers are as tight as can be and he has told them, “Here’s the deal, I can always beat up on you but there isn’t anyone else that can touch you.”

Jesse does a lot of day work for neighbors or at the grow yard in Marshall. “I raise Catahoula’s and Border Collies and I like to go catch wild cows for the neighbors,” he said. “You can get yourself in a bind once in a while – but you just have to do the best at that point and time.” Jesse’s entrepreneurial skills started early in life. One of his school projects for business in high school was to learn how to borrow money to start a business and how to make it work. He went to First National Bank of Kansas, Waverly and talked to the president about how to buy cows, the cost per acre to feed them and how to repay the loan. The banker Craig Meader was really impressed. As a senior, he was able to buy a neighbor’s heifers thanks to his presentation – that same banker gave Jesse a line of credit at the age of 18. He has figured out how to lease ground and run his small herd, which is up to 40 pairs.

The first time Jesse went to watch the NFR was 2014. The family made the trip to Vegas for three days. Six years later (2020), he made his first appearance at the NFR, which was held in Ft. Worth, due to Covid. “That was the hardest year of rodeo,” said Jesse. “You are competing against everybody everywhere you went because of all the Covid cancellations. You were matched up against everybody and anybody that had a card. It made it difficult – a lot harder for someone like me to get ahead in the money.” In 2021 he returned to the NFR, competing at the Thomas & Mack. Jesse won the average and took second in the world. He has had a few bumps along the way. On his race to earn Resistol Rookies of the Year, he tore his hamstring the first of August, forcing him to take some time off. His $14,000 lead over Garrett Shadbolt didn’t hold, and he missed that title by a couple hundred dollars. “It was a hard decision to make – I wanted that Rookie buckle and saddle, but it was the right decision.” He ended up hurt last year too, fracturing an outside vertebra – taking away his slot for the college finals by five points.

“I try to keep things simple,” he said about riding bucking horses and life in general. “It’s only as hard as you make it, and the windshield is always bigger than the rear-view mirror. I get up and do whatever I’ve got for the day and try not to make life any more difficult than it needs to be.” Jesse looks at rodeo as a competition with himself. “What everyone else does, I can’t control, the only thing I can control is what I do on the animal I’m given.” Jesse graduated from Missouri Valley College in 2021. “I still come and pick up at practices for Coach Mason and the kids. I get on the spur board and bucking machine as much as I can. Part of my scholarship was to be the pickup man for them.” He majored in Public Relations and minored in Business. “I learned how to smile and talk in front of the camera,” he said, admitting he could have tried harder in school. “I wanted to rodeo instead of sit in the classroom.” He learned about return on investments in his business classes, which will equip him to continue growing his herd and hopefully someday become a rancher. “I’ll see where the cards lay.”

“He’s pretty special,” said his coach, Ken Mason, from Missouri Valley College. “He’s a cowboy’s cowboy every day. Whatever he decides to do, he does. He’s mentally and physically tough.”

He has two favorite Bible verses. James 1:19 My beloved brothers, understand this everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. … “The world could learn from that. Slow to take it in and think about it.” His other one comes from Numbers 6:26-27 May the LORD show you his favor and give you his peace. “There was a Bible study the Monday before the 2018 AMERICAN at the rodeo dorms. We were pulling Bible verses out of a jar. Mine was Numbers 6:26 – May the lord show you his favor and peace. I remember driving from the college rodeo in Meridian, MS. to the AMERICAN, and I had that verse sitting on my rear-view mirror. I was nervous going into the AMERICAN, and I thought of that verse. May He show you His favor and give you, His peace.”

His younger brother, Ty, is attending Missouri Valley College, being coached by Ken Mason. Ken is a great coach in each event. Coach rode bucking horses himself. He understands what we go through, his passion and knowledge for bareback riding is what we call Moval Magic. It’s pretty special and what we call the “good stuff”. I have learned so much from Coach and consider him one of my best friends. The goal is to see Ty follow his older brother to the NFR. “This is a craft you have to learn on your own, but I’d like to think I helped him out,” said Jesse. “He’s on his permit. I just won Arcadia (94th Annual Arcadia All-Florida Championship Rodeo) and he won second there. That will forever be one of my favorite memories. In 2023, I’d like to be at the Thomas & Mack with my little brother – I think that would be stinking cool.”

“Smile all the time and be happy – life’s too short to have a stump on your shoulder.”