If Katie White defines what a Rodeo Princess is, we should all want to be one.  Words that start to describe her are warm, friendly, genuine, smart, passionate, hard-working and wise beyond her years.  I met Katie when she saved me from my own social awkwardness at my first Evergreen Rodeo Association meeting.   It is likely she sensed my human need to belong and walked right up to me to introduce herself.  My respect and admiration of her multiplies the more I get to know her.  As our lives become more urban and commercialized, knowing Katie reminds me of why we need to preserve our connection to agriculture, horses and all things rural.

Katie White grew up in the Evergreen / Conifer area and splits her time as a high school senior between Conifer High School and Red Rocks Community College.  She will attend Northeastern Junior College in Sterling in the fall, double majoring in Equine Management and Equine Industrial Science.  

Her journey with horses began when she was in seventh grade and her parents took the family for a week-long dude ranch vacation.  She cried when she left her horse for the week, “Flash”.  She started taking lessons from Julie Phillips at Bobkat Ranch and leased a horse there for a year.  Her parents gave her permission to get her own horse if she paid for it herself.  A year later, Katie had saved up enough and her parents moved the family to a local horse property.  Knowing the potential hazards of buying at an auction, Katie went to the 2007 National Western Select Horse Sale that takes place during the Stock Show.  At the sale, she rode “Zip” and knew he was the one. 

Over two years later, her belief hasn’t changed.   Katie states, “He is one of those special horses that you have that special bond with.  You can ride a million horses, but you know that one was meant to be for you.  My horse has always been there for me.  Whenever I have trouble or anything, I just go down to the barn and I’m with him.  I really think that he was a gift from God and the biggest blessing of my life.  All I have to do is see his cute face and it turns my day around no matter what.  He has pulled through for me every time.”

In the beginning, Katie’s parents did not feel the same.  They felt that Zip was a little big and young for her first horse.   “My parents love my horse now.  My parents always joke around with me saying my horse is my boyfriend.  He is the guy I spend the most time with.  He is the only guy I’m giving kisses to.”  She continues, “Horses have brought my family a little bit closer together.  Now, we can just go on rides.  My parents didn’t think that horseback riding was a sport, which was a really trying time for me when I first got into it.  They thought you just sit on the horse and go around.  But then my dad finally got a horse and realized that it takes a lot more practice and skill.  It is a lot more work and training to get the horse to do exactly what you want it to do.  You get a lot of rewards out of it.”  Those rewards and skills from training horses are what prompted her to pursue her degrees in Sterling.

While showing and finishing work are Katie’s favorite parts of training, part of the equine program at Northeastern Junior College will be starting a new colt every semester.  Katie’s horse training philosophy is to, “keep an open mind and give and take from every trainer.  I think that is what you need to do if you are going to become a horse trainer.  Not every method works for the same horse.”  Buying Zip really helped her begin that dream.  “Getting a young and green horse, he taught me and I taught him.  I put some errors on him that I had to go back and erase, but that horse has taught me more than any trainer about how to train a horse.  They are a one-of-a-kind animal and they are the best.  You can’t do this with any other kind of animal.  Unlike any other sport, all ages can ride.  There are so many different disciplines that, even if you tried to conquer all of them, you’re never going to.  You can keep on learning, so it’s never boring.”

Being a part of the process to become the 2010 Evergreen Rodeo Princess has also been a significant learning experience for her.  The process involves study and preparation for a number of judged events including a horsemanship pattern, flag run, written test, luncheon, speech and a personal interview.  Looking back, Katie says, “I learned more than I prepared for it.  Even if I didn’t win ‘Evergreen Rodeo Princess’ for 2010, I could not get this experience of what I learned anywhere else.  You meet a lot of people, you learn how to do a lot of things and I would never take it back.”  Since that time she has been the youngest member to want to join the Evergreen Rodeo Association.  She continues to be very involved with service projects and recently spent over sixty hours at the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo representing our Evergreen Rodeo.  You can see that when Katie does something, she does it one hundred percent.

Because of her own journey to get her horse, Katie found great value in that process.  She shares, “I would like people to know that even if you think you can’t afford a horse, there is always a way to.  If you really want to, there are jobs out there that you can get… I think that more kids and teenagers should have to work for their horses because it teaches them a lot more discipline, responsibility, and time management.  Once you get that horse, it is the most amazing feeling.  You know that it’s all yours.  My parents say, ‘that’s her horse, she bought it, she trained it, she did everything with it.  No one else is allowed to touch it.’”

One part that was missing for Katie in our community was an agricultural outlet in our schools.  Extra-curricular agricultural type activities to add to her college application were not available when she was busy working and training her horse.  “It’s a shame that our schools up here don’t have any agricultural stuff for us to do.  There’s no FFA within our schools, there’s nothing for the agricultural kids.  We do have 4-H up here, but if they could somehow apply 4-H within our school, that would be great.  That would inspire people who are interested.  A lot of people don’t know where to go or how to get started.”    

Katie is bringing back Zip from an injury he incurred early in the winter and is looking forward to the coming horse show season.  This summer, besides her favorite habit of sleeping in the barn, she and Zip will be going to local shows and striving to make it to Fort Worth, Texas next summer to show with the best of the best in the Paint World.

As they say in the horse world, “Pretty is as pretty does.”