After Jake Voris breaks out of the starting gate and hangs off one side of his horse to wrestle a 500-pound cow to a dead stop within five seconds, he can’t help but wonder at the sheer excitement rodeo offers.

Voris competes for CMU’s rodeo team and is excited about the direction he and his teammates are heading since its official recognition by CMU in 2010. Voris is ranked sixth in the region among collegiate steer wrestlers.

“We are a really young team with lots of learning to do, but we are starting to spread our points around, and we’re coming together,” Voris said. “Personally, I’m still working hard to make a top three spot in the region to qualify for finals in June.”

There is a long road ahead of Voris and the team on their way to the College National Finals Rodeo in Wyoming. The team completed its final rodeo of the fall season in Logan, Utah, at the end of September and is entering a crucial period of training before competing in its first of six rodeos during the spring, starting in March.

The team built a rodeo arena on a property off of 22 Road, just 15 minutes from campus, where the team can practice and keep all of the stock. The work put in during the offseason will make or break the team’s success in the spring season, and Voris said it basically comes down to how bad you want to succeed and what kind of work you’re willing to put in.

Sophomore Haillie Taylor’s passion for rodeo started in her early years, and she relishes the extreme thrill that rodeo offers.

“Rodeo is definitely an extreme sport,” Taylor said. “It’s not just you running up and down the court with four other people. It’s you and your horse. You communicate with your horse through body and mind, and the horses feel what you’re thinking, and that’s what makes it exciting.”

Rodeo continues to grow at CMU, and the team is excited to see what comes next as they stamp the future for CMU rodeo.

scschroc@mavs.coloradomesa.edu