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Thursday, January 26, 2006

Rodeo Royalty

By John Brennan
Mountain View Telegraph
    Jesse Gearhart of Tijeras earned the title of Miss Rodeo New Mexico 2006 back in May, but she won't be formally crowned until Saturday.
    She's spent the intervening months making appearances and raising money to help fund the exhausting schedule she'll maintain during her reign throughout this calendar year. Saturday's coronation ceremony and dinner/dance is also a fund-raising event.
    The title is an appropriate one for Gearhart, 24, who was born and raised in the Tijeras area and has been riding horseback her entire life.

Click to enlarge

    "I can't remember when I wasn't," she said in a phone interview Monday from Lake Havasu City, Ariz., where she had appeared at a rodeo over the weekend— one of the many appearances she'll make this year.
    Gearhart won the Miss Rodeo New Mexico crown after a five-day competition in Clovis. The contest is judged 50 percent on personality— prepared speeches, impromptu speaking and personal interviews with the judges.
    "There's no beauty (element to the competition)," she said.
    The other 50 percent of a contestant's score is based on horsemanship.
    "You draw for a horse you've never ridden before, and they give you a pattern to ride on that horse," she said. "They ask you to do various things to demonstrate your ability to control the horse and make it do what you want it to do."
    During her reign Gearhart will travel extensively from coast to coast, she said, attending rodeos and other western heritage events, visiting schools and hospitals, doing newspaper, TV and radio publicity interviews and signing autographs.
    "We'll also usually visit with the sponsor of a local rodeo— maybe a car dealership or a western wear store— and do autograph sessions and things to get them some publicity," she said.
    So far in January, Gearhart had already logged 4,000 miles, she said.
    "This is a complete public service job, we're not paid," she said. "It's a lot of work but also a lot of fun."
    Gearhart often appears at events with other rodeo queens from other states and organizations, and sometimes even travels with them.
    "If we know there's two of us from close states heading to the same place, we'll stick together," she said. "Sometimes my mom will travel with me, or if a girlfriend wants to see a particular rodeo she might come along. And sometimes I'm on my own."
    She appeared with eight other state queens at the National Western Stock Show in Denver.
    "At Cheyenne (Frontier Days) there will be over 100 there," she said of the event in July.
    Gearhart also appears at events such as the Western Music Awards, activities staged by the Single-Action Shooting Society and other rodeo queen pageants.
    "We try to show support for the contestants at other pageants," she said.
    She plans to compete again herself in December, for the title of Miss Rodeo America in an eight-day pageant in Las Vegas, Nev.
    The national contest involves written tests, horsemanship, speaking, impromptu questions and modeling. New Mexico has only won the national competition twice, and the last time was nearly 40 years ago, she said.
   
Longtime goal
    Miss Rodeo New Mexico has been a goal for Gearhart since she was a little girl. She's been involved in rodeo queen pageants for 16 years, and has won plenty of honors in contests like the Bernalillo County 4-H Queen contest, the New Mexico State Fair Queen contest, Miss Rodeo New Mexico and Miss Rodeo USA.
    It's all a long way from her early days at A. Montoya Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School and Manzano High, where she maintained a 4.0 grade-point average throughout. But not far at all from her roots, which have always included horses.
    Gearhart competed in rodeos as a youngster, mostly in barrel racing, but these days she said she shows horses more than competing. She also does reining— she was the rookie of the year for the Rocky Mountain Reining Horse Association in 2002— and raises quarter horses and paints at her family's East Mountains home.
    Gearhart is also studying computer engineering at UNM, but school may have to take a back seat for a while as she travels the country promoting rodeos.
    The coronation ceremony and benefit dinner/dance for Miss Rodeo New Mexico 2006 will be at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Posse Grounds, on Second Street between Alameda and Tramway in Albuquerque.
    Tickets are $25. For tickets or more information, e-mail to missrodeonewmexico2006@yahoo.com.