Cowgirl Up! (19 page)

One of her jobs was to exercise about twenty head of pickup horses every day for the two months before the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale.

Ann apparently impressed the producers, because they hired her the next year and she rode pickup for the next twenty-five years. This is an unusual occupation for a woman, and she is the only woman she is aware of who has done this on the PRCA level.

“They [the PRCA] would never sell me a card,” she said, “but if the rodeo committee would call in and say ‘OK, we know her,' they could hire me. They never turned me down.”

She said, “I've always regretted not being able to get my professional card. It would've been a nice feather in my hat.”

Ann experienced discrimination against women in the men's rodeo world, something that continued even twenty and thirty years after World War II ended. For the first couple of years she worked pickup, she was paid a lower rate than the men. However, Ann negotiated and was paid equally from then on.

But she admitted that she received many compliments on her work from national RCA rodeo announcer Cy Taillon, called “the golden voice of professional rodeo” and “rodeo's Walter Cronkite.” That made her feel “worthy,” she said.

Picking up was “hard work, but it was all terribly exciting and so fulfilling as a rider,” Ann said. “Some [inexperienced] riders get so scared you gotta tell them to ‘get off.'” Some would grab her around the neck and not let go, nearly pulling her off her horse.

“I've been jabbed and grabbed, and once I had the buttons torn off my shirt, showing my bra,” she related. “I had to ride through the arena trying to button my shirt.” No, she wasn't embarrassed. “It's just part of the job.

“Most of the cowboys were very polite and said ‘Thanks, Ann' as soon as I helped them off.”

Ann was injured in Rapid City, South Dakota, by a fellow pickup rider who was inexperienced and riding a horse that wasn't “well-broke.” When she hazed the bronc into the pen, the young man couldn't stop his horse and it crowded into the pen “with me and the bronc and bent my foot straight back.” It wasn't broken, but she spent the night with her foot elevated so she could ride again the next day. She says she suffers from arthritis in that foot and ankle today.

“I got bucked off my own horse one time,” Ann said. It happened when a rider accidently spurred Ann's horse in the flank when she picked him off his bronc. “And I got knocked out a time or two.” She said once a bronc came out and hit her horse broadside. She hit her head and the “lights went out.”

“You gotta be tough,” was her observation.

In all the years as a “pickup man,” Ann said only one bronc rider refused to allow her to pick him up. “I ain't getting' off on you,” he yelled when she rode up alongside him.

“Keep ridin' then,” she said.

The other pickup man, her husband, rode up and jerked him off his horse and told him, “Don't you ever do that again!” After that Ann just rode behind that particular cowboy and “let him take a beatin'” while he waited for another pickup man.

Ann not only helped run the ranch near Cohagen and raised quarter horses, but she was also constantly on the road, riding the rodeo circuit for twenty-five years. “It can be a tough life,” she admitted. “You gotta be young to do it . . . and you have to love it and be willing to sacrifice a lot to go down the road.”

The Secrests were neighbors to Bobby Brooks Kramer, but Ann and Bobby did not get along. “We were not friends. She was older and I think she saw me as competition. I don't know why, she was well known as a bronc rider.” The two strong-minded, feisty women did get into fisticuffs one day in Miles City “until the sheriff came along and broke it up.”

A good friend from the well-known Askin family was Margorie Askin Griebel, sister of Birdie Askin Johnston, both Bob Askin's daughters.

In addition to PRCA rodeos, Ann also helped put on amateur, Indian, college trials, and kids' rodeos and did pickup for those. She also helped start a rodeo company and put on rodeo schools with champion bronc rider Bill Pauley and bull rider, Wally Badgett, as instructors. Ann was also active in the Northwest Ranch Rodeo Association and edited their monthly publication called the
Piggin String
for many years.

“We finally bought a camper because we had so many young kids coming with us, and I'd cook for them.”

After Ann and her husband divorced in 1986, she continued to ride pickup with her son, Cotton, who had started picking up with his parents as a teen. Being able to work with him was one of the highlights of Ann's life. Cotton continues to rodeo as a pickup man and compete in roping events, Ann said, but mostly devotes his time to roping and riding on his own ranch near Hardin.

“Those were great years of performing a feat that few, if any, women have had a chance to do in a lifetime,” she wrote. She was honored to have worked with some of the biggest rodeo producers: Reg Kesler, J. J. Smith, and Sonny Linger.

Another highlight of her life was when Jay Harwood, RCA announcer from Chinook, Montana, nominated her for the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.

Harwood wrote in his letter to the Hall of Fame:

In the truest sense, she's a cowgirl, an outstanding horsewoman and individual. She was ranch reared and knows what it takes to run a ranch, maintain her love for livestock and rodeos, perpetuate the ideals of a Montana cowgirl.

I had the opportunity to see Ann in action in the arena picking up broncs and saving cowboys at the famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale for a number of years and other top rodeos in Montana. She earned herself the respect and reputation as one of the best in the business and she can ride and rope as good as any cowboy that I have ever known.

Another pro-rodeo cowboy, Wally Badgett, wrote: “Actually ‘Cow-girl Hall of Fame' could be considered pretty tame for Ann . . . ‘top hand hall of fame' might be more fitting. In these times when you hear comments like ‘She can do it just like a man,' Ann can do it better than most men when it comes to cowboying. . . . I know, because she has picked me off a lot of bucking horses.”

Another compliment that thrilled Ann was from announcer Cy Taillon in an interview with the
Denver Post:
“Ann has the ability to do a man's job on horseback in the arena, yet can and does dress and act the feminine lady she is at the party at night.”

Shirley Stuver, writer for the
Powder River Examiner
in Broadus, wrote:

Seeing a working queen of rodeo and horsemanship . . . pickup bucked out riders for an eight hour stretch . . . with never a miss and a bit of TLC added, and then assist . . . in immediate area clearing in foot-deep mud, which wore out several pickup horses in one afternoon.

Then presiding at breakfast on Monday morning with all the bruises covered by feminine attire, and taking time to further charm adoring fans as she spoke of the bum calf she brought to the sale to feed, because it couldn't stay on the ranch alone.

The induction in November 2003 “touched me deeply,” Ann said. “I think back on the many things I've done that others would have loved to do but didn't have a chance. I happened to be in the right situation where I could do them. There are women who are as good, but they weren't able to exercise their potential. I thank God for all of my successes and for overlooking my failures.”

At the induction ceremony Ann was onstage, receiving her awards: a plaque, a medal, and a pair of custom-made Justin Full Quill ostrich boots. Then the emcee told how Ann had watched aspiring young cowboys hone their skills at the Secrest Rodeo schools and youth rodeos, and how she had commented that she had always hoped one of those little cowboys or cowgirls would make it to the National Finals and she could go watch.

Then a young man came bounding up the steps to give her a big hug. It was Montana's Dan Mortensen, six-time world champion saddle bronc rider and world all-around rodeo champion. He had been a student in the Secrests' rodeo school, and Ann had picked him off his first professional saddle bronc.

“It just thrilled me to death,” Ann said. “And he gave us tickets to watch him at the [National Rodeo] finals in 2003.” Mortensen won his sixth championship that year, tying the record with legendary cowboy Casey Tibbs. Ann was as proud of Mortensen as if he'd been her own son.

Ann is now retired and married to Robert Hanson, a quarter horse breeder, and they live on a ranch along the Little Missouri River in the Badlands of North Dakota. “I just quit riding last year,” she said. “I've had both knees and both shoulders replaced from all my wrecks, and then my horse got too old and I had to put him down.” Without a horse now, she misses riding but spends much of her time writing cowboy poetry and traveling around to cowboy gatherings, reminiscing about the “old days” of ranching and rodeoing. “I would definitely do it all over again.”

Her listing on the Hall of Fame website reads: “Ann Secrest Hanson has lived a life of quiet dedication devoted to every facet of ranching and rodeo.”

In a poem titled “The Induction” Ann wrote:

I would not trade my lifestyle, tho very hard and harsh at times, for the satisfaction that it brings

To be honored by one's peers, and all the great women out there, who helped to tame the west

Was to me, the height of my western career, and let me know, that to the world, I had really done my best.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

—M
UHAMMAD
A
LI

W
omen riders today can compete on rough stock in amateur rodeos, but if they want to do it professionally, the only option is to enter the men's field at PRCA rodeos. And only two are currently taking on that challenge: thirty-six-year-old saddle bronc rider Kaila Mussell, who's been competing in saddle bronc riding for ten years, and twenty-one-year-old bull rider Maggie Parker, who started winning money at sanctioned rodeos in 2012.

The Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) is the descendent of the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA) formed in 1948; the name changed in 1981. The WPRA is the oldest women's sports association in the United States, and it is the only one governed entirely by women. In 1990 it won a lawsuit that allows it to remain an all-female association.

While the GRA grew out of cowgirls' desire to compete in rough-stock events, the WPRA's primary sanctioned event is barrel racing, usually in conjunction with PRCA events. Barrel racers compete for millions of dollars each year, and contestants are ranked nationally, based on how much money they earned in competition. (Today's top racer, Brittany Pozzi of Victoria, Texas, has so far earned $1,665,497 in her career.) The top riders go on to compete in the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April, and the top fifteen at the end of the rodeo season are invited to compete at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas in December.

The WPRA also has an all women's division, and the rodeos feature breakaway calf roping, tie-down calf roping, team roping, bareback riding, and bull riding, in addition to the barrel race. Contestants count points earned in competition to qualify for the Women's National Finals Rodeo each October at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas.

The WPRA has added junior divisions and in 2007 began recognizing a junior world champion barrel racer.

From seventy-four original members in 1948, the organization has grown to more than twenty-five hundred worldwide, including Canadian provinces and Australia, and is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The WPRA's women's division once included bareback and bull riding. However, the organization has backed off women's rough-stock events, handing out its last world titles in bareback and bull riding in 2008.