FORD CITY, Pa. — Jocsalyn Collini doesn’t pause when asked how old she was the first time she rode a horse.
“Oh that’s easy, I was in my Mom’s belly,” the precocious 11-year-old answers with a broad smile as she handles the lasso she is readying for use at the Crooked Creek Horse Park. Jocsalyn was spending her Friday evening at the 23rd Annual Fort Armstrong Rodeo.
She was standing behind the family horse trailer with her mom Jessica Collini and Robin Weaver, two accomplished barrel horse racers. Standing around are Jocsalyn’s 10-year-old best friend Jillian Artman and Weaver’s 14-year-old niece Augusta, who is busy grooming an impatient and excited Rocco.
They are among hundreds of other tight-knit groups of multigenerational females here to compete against each other, support each other, and bond. This is a community based on mutual respect and sport based on discipline, requiring each aspiring athlete to be coachable, on time, focused, prepared, and hardworking.
One thing is missing from the young women and teenaged girls all throughout the fairgrounds as they prepared for the big weekend that serves as a qualifier for the national rodeo this fall: no cellphones.
That means no Snapchat, no artfully directed Instagram poses of them on horses, or of plates filled with corn on the cob, barbecue ribs, funnel cake, or cotton candy.
No Twitter hashtags boasting of their girl power. And no selfies.
“Oh, ha that is for the prissy girls, you know people who don’t know how to communicate unless it’s through staged social media postings, I prefer to live in the moment,” says the younger Collini with remarkable clarity who explains her cellphone is in her parents truck far from the action of the night.
Her best friend Jillian also doesn’t have hers, neither does her mom Jessica, or her friend Robin, nor her niece Augusta.
Closer to the rodeo arena, where cowboys wait sitting above the paddocks, the young women who open the show, the ‘pivot girls’ sit on their horses, ready to begin the traditional pageantry of the opening ceremony that starts with their grand entry.
Morgan Reese, Toni Marie DeCarlo, Brooke Vance, Arley Wilson, Stephanie Cribbs, and Erin Kaufman, all members of the Western Pennsylvania Rodeo Association Pivot Team, wait for the honor ride into the arena. All six are dressed in crisp white shirts, blue denim jeans, and white cowboy hats.
All of them have been training since they were young girls and all are members of civic groups like the FFA and the 4H Club. It was definitely a sort of “girl-power” environment, one that cued all of the empowerment criteria feminists have fought for generations, but without some of the hang-ups. They didn’t need to pressure each other to all think and believe the same thing, they didn’t need a slogan, they didn’t need a hashtag, they didn’t need to brag about it on a social media platform, they were just going to go out and “do.”
“We compete against each other and we comfort each other when we lose. We are all here to grow. This community and competition helps us sharpen our character for our future,” says Vance of her fellow pivot girls who range in age between 15 and 18.
None of them have a cellphone handy either.
In fact, after walking around the stands scanning the thousands of attendees, making the rounds several times, it was difficult to find anyone waiting to watch the three-hour-long rodeo using their phones. Instead, they were talking to their friends or family that they came with, or the new people they met in the grandstands.
It was as though there were two different universes I had traversed in one day, the one in the mid-afternoon in downtown Pittsburgh at a local coffee shop where everyone’s head was buried in their smartphone, to this place where the smartphone was put in its place, in their pocket, pocketbook, or in the car while they enjoyed their lives.
It is a place where national politics is put in its place and localism reigns. They are not obsessed about the latest Twitter scandal, gaffe or hysteria that ebbs and flows on social media. They think about water quality, the conservation of their land and their community, and how the price of gas is impacting their jobs.
As if on cue, the rodeo begins and the girls gallop into the arena, with an older woman joining them carrying an oversized, flowing American flag while they carry a variety of colorful flags.
They stop for the invocation and singing of the national anthem. Everyone bows their head for the prayer and stands for the pledge of the allegiance and the national anthem, then girls set the pivots for the grand entry, when the rodeo officials and contestants ride in.
When the pivot girls exit, that is the signal the rodeo has begun.
The sense of family and community isn’t just a feeling here. It is a reality in this highly competitive and highly supportive network of equestrians all gathered less than 30 miles outside Pittsburgh for a weekend of competition, bull riding, barrel racing, bronc saddle riding, team roping, primitive camping, friendships, thrilling victories, and wrenching defeats.
The contestants come from all around the country and Canada. The big victory that night happened in just over eight seconds when Cody Sauls, 26, of Georgia, rode a 1,000-plus-pound bull long enough to score 76 points to qualify for the nationals.
“This is a sport that thrives for those who prepare,” he says after his exhilarating win, he rubs his upper knee, which is still sore he says from a fall he took the week before.
The University of West Georgia graduate said he is thrilled, but mindful of how he got there. “This is a sport and a community dedicated to hard work and the support of your friends who are also your competitors. It’s a good life lesson that can be applied to anything in this country,” he says as he walks towards his fellow cowboys and cowgirls to a series of hugs and slaps on the back.
No one took a picture with their smartphone.
