Five Welsh teens advance to national rodeo competition

WELSH - Five highschoolers here recently won or placed in the Louisiana High School Rodeo Finals that were held May 29-June 2 and will be moving on to the national competition.

Taylor Ardoin, Kylie Connor, Cameron Gotreaux, John Mayers and Coy Hebert are all preparing to do their best at their respective competitions at the national stage in Rock Springs, Wyoming, which will take place from July 16-21.

Taylor Ardoin, who was recently crowned Louisiana High School Rodeo Queen,

said moving on to nationals feels amazing because only a select few in the country receive the honor to represent their state.

“We have a special job, which is telling about our state and representing it. You have to be able to talk to people in an approachable, winning way,” she said. “The preparation is always the biggest challenge when you start to compete. You already have the practice and know what you need to do, so you just have to focus on perfecting that.”

Ardoin said there are several different elements of her overall performance, which she will need to fine-tune before finals.

“I have to work on an impromptu speech, my modeling, horsemanship and written section,” she said. “There will be a lot of practice from now until I get to finals.”

Cameron Gotreaux said he enjoys competing and being challenged in bulldogging, or steer wrestling.

“You know what it takes to win, so I’m going to go up and see what they throw at us,” he said.

Gotreaux said part of the fun is getting even better with his friends.

“With John Mayes and Gavin Swallow, them boys and I have all practiced together and rodeoed together for a while now. We drive each other and that’s why we bulldog together. We all push each other even though we all want to win,” he said.

Gotreaux said he has plenty of confidence moving forward.

“I can handle myself. That, being said, I draw well but you have to prepare and get it done to muscle memory in the time between now and nationals,” he said.

Kylie Connor is a barrel racer who won at state while she was a freshman. Connor said she was able to move on to nationals by giving consistent, clean runs at state.

“It’s cool to be able to do it my freshman year because it doesn’t happen often. I’m very blessed and excited,” she said. “I’d say I’m able to read my horse well because I’ve been on him so long.”

Connor said she has been training hard for nationals.

“I’ve been at my trainer’s for a while getting everything together to make sure that I’m in sync with my horse and doing everything right. I’m trying to get even better at making sure my hands are in the right places and on my horse at the right time,” she said.

John Mayes, who began performing in rodeos in the eighth grade after seeing his sister do the same, placed in the top four in Louisiana in bulldogging.

“I just caught as many techniques as I could,” Myers said. “I just went in there and performed as tightly as I could.”

Mayes said the sense of community is what he enjoys most about the rodeo, especially with his closer rodeo friends.

“It’s fun to compete and hang out with everyone,” he said. “We have all been working hard. Cameron and I have been practicing with each other a lot recently. We work well encouraging each other to get better.”

Mayes said he and Cameron both have advantages which will help them going forward.

“He’s got that perfect technique when it comes to bulldogging that’s really going to help him,” he said. “Mine’s not quite as good, but I’m way bigger than him. When you’re smaller you have to make up for it with technique to make sure you draw your rope right.”