Dickinson State rodeo women's team earns first-place in Montana event
Apr. 29—HAMILTON, Mont. — With a grand total of 385 points, the Dickinson State University women's rodeo team took top-honors at the University of Montana event over the weekend — edging out second-place Black Hills State University's 275 — with the Blue Hawks men's team nailing down 180 points and tied for sixth with Graceland University. Black Hills State was in first at the event with 620 points and Mid Plains Community College was in second at 380.
"This last weekend went pretty good, for some; Jory Boote had an outstanding weekend and won both rounds in the average in the team-roping and won the first round in calf-roping and ended up third in the average," DSU rodeo head coach Eudell Larson said. "Dalton Praus was second in the bull-riding and we had a couple of girls place in the goat-tying."
Kiarra Marie Reiss continued to perform well in barrel-racing with a blue-ribbon time/score of 32.34 and teammate Kelly Jo Bang was in there at fifth with a 32.57 effort. The breakaway-roping event featured Kailyn Kell Groves coming in first with a time/score of 4.9 and teammate Samantha Jan Sabrosky came in sixth with a 10.3 in the same event to pace the 'Hawks in pole-position for the weekend.
The men's team came in with some exceptional results as well, with Clay Roper Gerhardt earning a sixth-place performance in the all-around at 100 points and Gerhardt took a tie for sixth-place with an 11.2 in tie-down roping, just behind teammate Boote in a tie for fourth with a time/score of 10.7. Gerhardt wasn't finished with his exemplary performances as he took home a fifth-place 7.9 in the team-roping/header competition.
"In the breakaway-roping it went pretty good, and everybody seems to be clicking," Larson said. "With the breakaway-roping — and you can't ever tell with cattle — I was hoping we would have had more girls finish well, because they've just been knocking it out at practice and roping super-good, and things just didn't fall out for a few of them at Black Hills."
Larson added, "But a couple of them did well, so practices are going good and we've got good expectations going into the last rodeo at Lincoln this weekend."
Meanwhile, in the team-roping/heeler segment of the weekend, Cayden Don King was in at seventh with a time/score of 8.3, just in front of teammate Owen McGowan Gustafson's 8.5 to round-out the weekend performances for the Blue Hawks in the penultimate competition of the season.
Next-up for the Blue Hawks will be the season-finale in Lincoln, Neb. this weekend. The Dickinson Press will have a full report on Monday, May 6 for that event and a wrapup to the 2023-24 season as it comes to a close.
For more information about Dickinson State University athletics, please keep reading your Dickinson Press and/or visit
https://www.dsubluehawks.com/landing/index
. For updates on National Intercollegiate Rodeo, head on over to
https://collegerodeo.com/events/
.
