Former MacGregor area resident Shyla Fuchs took her rodeo skills to Vegas where she placed in the Top 30 at the 5th annual Rope for the Crown Breakaway Championship.
“I rodeoed this year in the Heartland Rodeo Association and that association pays into a spot in Vegas to an event called Rope for the Crown,” she explains. “It is a world championship breakaway roping event that Jackie Crawford has designed and put on. The season leader of breakaway roping in the Heartland Association gets the qualification to go down to Vegas to rope in that event. This year, I was able to meet that requirement. So, we decided to make the trip down and enter it and rope against some of the best in the world. And it was amazing, absolutely amazing.”
She tells us one of the highlights from this trip.
“I met some really nice people, and being able to rope against them,” Fuchs says. “Because a lot of them have been roping longer than I have, or they at least have year-round opportunities to rope, more than we do up here in Canada due to our weather and climate. So, that was really cool.”
She says this competition is held in a venue that is very different compared to what she is used to, right outside a hotel.
"So, they bring in a bunch of dirt and they build it all in the parking lot, and that's where we spend our time. We rope there, right in the middle, right beside the street. It was just so different than what we do up here. So, that was a really, really neat experience.”
Fuchs appreciates the opportunity to compete at such an event.
Growing up in southern Manitoba, Fuchs became well known for her love of horses and competition.
“I have had horses my whole life,” she says. “I got my horse brought to school for show-and-tell when I was five or six, because I had Pockets there and that's when we had him. All my birthday parties had horses involved in them. And then in Grade 7, I started high school rodeoing which is where people really started to learn a lot more about my horse involvement.”
Fuchs says it became clear at an early age that horses should be part of her life.
“Honestly, it’s just in my blood. My mom tells this story every once in a while. She said when I was a baby, she put a kitten in front of my face, and I liked it and stuff, and you know it was cute and cuddly. She put a puppy (in front of me) and I kind of lit up a little more, had a bigger smile. And she said she let a horse put its face in my lap or in my car seat, or whatever I was sitting in. And she said I literally couldn't even control myself. My eyes lit up so much, I started laughing, giggling.”
