Aleah Higgs

When you think of a high school student-athlete, you might picture a quarterback, dropping back into the pocket while scanning for open receivers downfield.

Or, perhaps a softball pitcher, winding up and throwing a perfect strike. An image that probably does not come to mind is that of a rider astride a galloping horse, tracing a figure-eight pattern around three large barrels at breakneck speed.

“Rodeo is not common around here,” states NCHS senior Aleah Higgs. Although Jasper County is a largely rural area, and horse ownership is not uncommon, rodeo is not as popular here as it is in the south and west of the country. In fact, Aleah and her siblings (a brother and sister, twins who just turned 21, and a younger sister who is a sophomore this year) fell intorodeo almost by accident.

Aleah’s brother had a friend that rode bucking horses. This is the event that people most often associate with rodeo, where a rider must stay in the saddle (or on the bare back) of a bucking horse for eight seconds, holding on with only one hand. “So my brother thought that it was a good idea to get into bucking horses and ride them,” Aleah recalls.

“My parents thought, ‘If we’re really getting into this, then we probably need to let your sisters do it, too.’” Needing something to transport their mounts and equipment to rodeos, they went to look at a horse trailer that was for sale. The sellers were also selling a horse, but the Higgs family was not in the market for a horse – or so they thought. But the horse was so good natured, and such a handsome animal, that Aleah’s dad made a deal with the sellers. He would pay asking price for the trailer, and not try to talk the sellers down, if they would throw the horse in as well. “And we got the horse. We say we got the horse for free,” she says, laughing.

That horse’s name is Jamie, and Aleah’s older sister rode her for about three years before Aleah started riding her. Aleah and Jamie have been rodeoing together for about four years now. “I do much better on her than what my sister did,” Aleah confides with a mischievous grin. She relates how she and Jamie have competed in rodeos all over the country. “Jamie’s gotten me everywhere. She’s taken me out to Wyoming, Oklahoma… all over the nation.”

Like any other athlete, Jamie is beginning to feel her age a little, and the time is approaching when she will have to give up the excitement and fast pace of the arena. “She’s still running great,” asserts Aleah. “You can just tell she needs more maintenance.” Aleah admits it will be tough to transition to a new horse, after partnering with Jamie for so long. “But for now, me and Jamie, all the way,” she says.

Aleah and Jamie compete in barrel racing and pole bending. In barrel racing, the horse and rider attempt to run a cloverleaf pattern around three barrels arranged in a triangle in the fastest time. Pole bending is a timed event in which a horse and rider run a weaving pattern through six vertical poles arranged in a straight line. Success in both events requires a combination of athletic ability in the horse, and skilled horsemanship in the rider. “There’s big patterns, there’s small patterns, there’s good dirt, there’s bad dirt. There’s a bunch of obstacles you have to face,” says Aleah. “It’s just, who can handle the obstacles best?”

As you might imagine, another obstacle that rodeo competitors (human and equine) must sometimes face is injury. Aleah recently suffered a concussion when Jamie’s halter became caught on a gate latch. Jamie panicked and thrashed, and Aleah was thrown and slammed her head against the steel gate. “But, I rodeoed the next day,” she says proudly.

Aleah wants to keep rodeoing, and attend college as well. To that end, she has been researching schools that have rodeo teams, such as Fort Hays State University in Kansas, the University of Tennessee-Martin, and Murray State University in Kentucky. “Rodeo is such an expensive sport, so for me to be able to afford to rodeo – I’m looking at the future, where I’m having kids, I’m raising a family – I want to have that degree, where I can work and be able to pay for rodeo for my kids, as well as for myself.”

No matter what school she ends up at, she is planning to study chiropractic, first earning her degree in human chiropractic, and then going on to obtain a license to perform chiropractic on animals, like Jamie. She should not have trouble getting into whatever school she decides on, possessing the good grades and strong work ethic needed to succeed in the college environment. “I have worked very hard on my academics,” she says. “I’ve kept a 4.0 though high school, and scored [okay] on the SAT.” She played basketball last year, but for her senior year, she wanted to focus solely on rodeo, with the intent of bolstering her already impressive rodeo resume. “What I really am striving to do is to get my name out there and known to colleges, so they can give me scholarships,” she explains.

One way to do that is to qualify for and compete in the National High School Finals Rodeo in Rock Springs, WY. To qualify, you must be in the top four in your event at the state level, and as this story was being written, Aleah sits first in Barrel Racing, third in Pole Bending, and third all-around in the state of Illinois. Aleah has qualified each of the last two years, and it looks like she is well on her way to a third trip to Wyoming this year.

After college, Aleah wants to set up her chiropractic practice in an area where rodeo is more popular. “Someplace where I can go out and be able to ride, and not have to drive two hours to go to a barrel race,” she says. And, given that some of her patients will be equine rodeo athletes, it also makes good business sense to set up shop where the rodeos are. But you can bet that even if she were a banker, a chef or anything else, she would not be found too far from a rodeo arena. She leaves no room for doubt when she says, “This is my life. This has been my life since fifth or sixth grade. To just drop it would be heartbreaking.”

It has been said that all of life is a stage, and in the world of theater-folk, the phrase of well-wishing is, ‘break a leg.’ But for Aleah, stage or not, we can’t bring ourselves to wish her luck in quite that way so, instead, we’ll just say, ‘ride safe.’