By Peter Schurmann. Ethnic Media Services. Translation by Pamela Cruz.
High school rodeo participants say the patience and courage that comes with caring for and training horses can help curb the impulses that lead to bullying.
It’s tournament day in Corning, a small town about an hour north of Sacramento. Helmets and boots squelch through the mud on a rainy Saturday as more than 100 competitors prepare for a series of events, from roping to cutting, pole bending to cattle braving.
Thirteen-year-old Stella Aleman smiles and her eyes sparkle as she rides her horse, Ice Baby, amid a group of giddy cowgirls.
Radiating confidence, you’d never guess that just weeks earlier she’d been the target of a cruel bullying campaign. “I was being bullied for riding horses, people calling me horse girl or cowgirl. People were yelling ‘yee haw’ around me, thinking it was funny,” she recalls. “It made me feel like I wasn’t normal. It made me not want to do this anymore.”
Stella’s mother, Andrea Aleman, is a registered nurse in Clear Lake, a town 60 miles south in Lake County. “It was very, very difficult,” she says with tears in her eyes as she describes her daughter’s struggle over the past few months. The threats became so constant that Stella had to be pulled out of school and placed in independent study. Local police eventually stepped in. “My daughter is very young … they were threatening to beat her up.”
Bullying can leave lasting scars for both victims and perpetrators, affecting grades, graduation rates, and even future employment and career opportunities. At its worst, it can lead to severe depression or suicidal thoughts.
More than 30 percent of California students reported having been victims of bullying at least once between 2016 and 2020, according to data from the California Healthy Kids Survey. And although race or sexual orientation are often triggering factorsIn Stella's case it was for her participation in the rodeo.
A year-round lifestyle
Despite its popularity (43 million Americans identify as rodeo fans, according to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), the equestrian sport remains niche among California youth. The California High School Rodeo Association (CHSRA) has about 800 members statewide.
The cost (up to $10,000 per year per horse in California), the commitment and time required to properly care for and train the animals, and the travel involved in participating in state and national tournaments are just some of the limiting factors.
Yet if their immersion in rodeo sets them apart, the irony is that the high school rodeo community sees itself rooted in a tradition that grew out of the cattle ranches that have long been a mainstay, even a defining one, of much of California’s rural economy, especially in the north. Far from being outliers, people here — young and old — will tell you they’re holding on to something precious, a bulwark against a hyper-digitized and increasingly encroaching urban world.
For the past 10 years, Marco Luna has served as the president of CHSRA District 2, which stretches from the Bay Area-adjacent counties of Marin and Sonoma to Humboldt and Del Norte in the far north (there are 9 districts total in California). A retired police officer and son of Mexican immigrants, he spends his time tending to his ranch in Humboldt when he's not shepherding rodeo families to and from competitions.
Unlike seasonal sports like basketball or baseball, he says, rodeo is a year-round “lifestyle” that requires commitment and dedication.
There’s the daily feeding, the grooming, the training, the bonding. The horses “have to be your friends,” she stresses, a relationship Luna describes as “therapeutic” for the young people involved. Recognizing its value, universities such as Cal Poly Humboldt are now considering adding rodeo to their sports program, Luna says.
“Some kids struggle in school, in life, in their family environment, and this is their outlet,” he continues. “These kids build those bonds with these animals and then go out and compete.”
A culture of care
California is rife with efforts to reduce or prevent bullying, many of them centered on education and awareness about the harms bullying can cause. For Luna, the magic of high school rodeo comes through the connection kids share with their horses and the values that spread from there — values he believes can help curb the impulses that lead to bullying in the first place.
Competitors sign codes of conduct, as well as social media contracts, and must keep their grades up. If they fail to meet any of these, they will not be able to compete. “We want them to go out and become good public citizens,” Luna says.
It’s that culture of attention that prompted 16-year-old Gracelyn Minic-Hayes to headline a Blue Up Day tournament in honor of National Bullying Prevention Month in October. “I was cyberbullied by anonymous accounts, meaning I have no idea who they were,” says Minic-Hayes, this year’s District 2 queen, adding that she was targeted because of a minor speech impediment.
Things got so bad, she says, that she started feeling anxious walking into school, not knowing who was attacking her. “But I knew when I walked into the rodeo, everyone just loved you. There was no bullying here.”
Minic-Hayes is aware that kids like Stella are being bullied for their rodeo involvement. “We’re different, we’re weird, and our views don’t match up with theirs,” she says, which is partly why she pushed for the Blue Up Day event. “At the end of the day, bullies are just trying to tear you down. But here you can learn, grow, and be yourself. And I thought some of our kids in our district might need a reminder.”
“My best friends”
Stella jumps off Ice Baby and takes his front paw in her hands. The contrast is striking: this powerful animal towers over a tiny teenager who, with practiced confidence, gently rubs her before taking his muzzle in her hands and planting a kiss on it. Ice Baby leans in for another.
Weeks earlier, Stella's Instagram account, which had about 3,000 followers, had been shut down after someone complained about animal abuse. Animal rights activists have long pushed for a statewide rodeo ban. Los Angeles appeared poised Tuesday to join San Francisco and Pasadena in banning rodeos. ban rodeo events within the city limits.
As Stella says, school bullies and activists become almost synonymous with a world that sees their passion as something to be ridiculed or removed altogether.
“It was really hard to get over it,” she says. “Then I realized that it doesn’t matter if other people bully me, because I have a great family here. It really helped me get over it.”
And he adds: “These horses are like my best friends.”
EMS' Stop The Hate initiative is made possible by funding from the California State Library (CSL) in partnership with the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (CAPIAA). The views expressed on this website and other materials produced by EMS do not necessarily reflect the official policies of CSL, CAPIAA, or the California government.
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