Women Gallop Away With Fourth At Nationals

Women's rodeo team members (from left) Callie Albrecht, Kristi Lee, Haley Kolle and Wendy Schuller

The SHSU women’s rodeo team rode, roped and tied their way to a fourth place finish in the College National Finals Rodeo, held June 10-18 in Casper, Wyo.

The team, consisting of special education major Wendy Schuller, marketing major Kristi Lee, agricultural business major Haley Kolle and pre-medicine major Callie Albrecht, combined for a total of 353.3 points to give them fourth place out of 35 women’s teams.

“This is probably the best women’s team that has been to the college finals for Sam Houston in a number of years,” said rodeo team head coach Roger Hanagriff. “All four of them have the ability to win their events.”

SHSU fell behind Tarleton State, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and the National American University, which picked up first through third, but beat out such universities as New Mexico State, Texas Tech, McNeese State and Texas A&M.

“ You’re at the college finals with the best in the nation already, so to end up No. 4 in the nation is room for improvement, but it’s a pretty great accomplishment, so I’m excited,” he said. “We went from actually third to about 13th and ended up fourth, so it was an interesting week.”

Within their respective events, Schuller placed as the reserve champion in barrel racing, sealed by an impressive last run time of 13.89 seconds.

“ Her time in the last go ties the arena record in the college finals, so it was a lot of fun,” Hanagriff said. “Her horse is really a nice horse. Some of these horses run better in a big pen; he’s a big pen horse and the college finals is a tiny, little arena. She actually started off and ran him, and he ran pretty good, and then he just got faster every night.”

Lee, who was the women’s all-around champion at the regional rodeo and went to the finals in two events, finished fourth in breakaway roping out of 56 participants, 14th in goat tying out of 45, and was third in the college finals women’s all around with 138.3 points.

“ One of our goals last year, for me anyway, was to try to recruit a good set of girls, and I think we did that this year,” Hanagriff said. “There were a lot of other girls too that placed during the year that led our team to win the region.”

He added that he feels the women’s team is very strong, and only losing one team member, he has great expectations for them next year.

“ I could only take four girls to the finals, but there were about eight girls who added points to our team all year long,” Hanagriff said. “We’ve got a lot of depth to our team for next year. It was a good year; it was a really good team.”

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SHSU Media Contact: Jennifer Gauntt
June 28, 2005
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