Ep. 36 - Katy Lucas with KT Rodeo Industries
(January 15, 2020) - Katy Lucas is a former Miss Rodeo Canada who is living in Texas, ropes in Arizona, and is an all and all jack-of-all-trades. A broadcaster and a reporter, you may have thought that Katie (Schrock) was analytical when it came to rodeo stats but Katy Lucas will show you what’s up when it comes to rodeo stats and updates! Join hosts Katie & Rachel as they talk to Katy about her career as a rodeo athlete team roping and breakaway roping, rodeo sports broadcasting, Canadian rodeos in comparison to U.S. rodeos, and her time spent as a former Miss Rodeo Canada.
Background
The daughter of Joe Lucas, a team roper, tie-down roper, and steer wrestler who has four Canadian championships and six appearances at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. As young kids, Katy and her brother Kyle were able to follow along with their dad to learn all the life lessons you can learn from life on the rodeo trail.
“I really saw the difference when I became Miss Rodeo Canada because I got to go to the states a lot more as an adult. When we went with our dad to the states as kids, we were young. I don’t have a lot of memories of what those rodeos were like,” Katy explains. Most of her American rodeo memories centraled around events like Disney World.
Being able to go to a lot of great rodeos in both countries, they have a lot of similarities which Katy attributes to the competitors and the quality of production. Canada has a strong roughstock contingent as far as horses and bulls goes, so Canada really holds its own with that.
“To me, rodeo is rodeo. There are differences and you have your favorites, there are rodeos that are unique or have unique parts to them but the culture of rodeo never really changes no matter if you are north or south of the border,” says Katy.
Joe Lucas Tie-Down Schools
“He doesn’t do it so much anymore… there is one school that he still puts on,” says Katy. Whether it was helping out or being in the school itself to learn, Katy is a big fan of roping schools. “It makes a big difference when the set up is different … and have those other people around you to help you learn in a more structured format.”
While her father may have always been around when they were working in the practice pen, her father is a very quiet person only helping when asked. At these schools, he was speaking up and educating others which was a new side that they got to see at these roping schools.
Despite being 107 pounds at her record highest weight, she knew she’d never be a tie-down roper but she had a lot of fun tying calves off the post. Never having a horse that worked the rope very well, she never felt confident tying calves in a competition.
Kyle Lucas, Katy’s Brother
Mentioned in our Episode 35 podcast, Katy and Kyle look exactly the same except he’s 6’2” and she’s 5’4”. Also a team roper, Kyle has stepped back to focus more on his tie-down roping and competes both north and south of the border.
Two years ago he ended up second in Canada to Shane Hanchey who battled it out all week long at the finals.
“It was so nerve wracking, they actually turned the cameras on to me on the back of the chutes practically screaming at him,” Katy says with a laugh. Ultimately, Shane barely came through to get the win.
In the interview last year when he won the Canadian Finals from a position that everyone counted him out from he said, “Big time players make big time moves.” That’s exactly what he did to win multiple national titles.
“It’s cool to be in this sport with my brother even though we are on different sides of it,” says Katy.
Becoming Miss Rodeo Canada
First a hometown junior rodeo queen title, Katy went on to run for the Alberta High School rodeo queen contest and, upon winning, went to Nationals where she competed against 42 other young women for the National High School Rodeo Queen Title.
“I wish I could have gone and done it again. There are definitely things that I would have done differently and be more confident in myself,” says Katy. She was able to pull it together and place in the Top 10 with her predecessor winning the national title the next year.
Heading off to college she took a break and then graduated and got a job. The title of Miss Ponoka Stampede, a title she had always wanted but had been shut down for about seven years, they decided to bring it back. Missing it the first year it came back due to work, Katy was supposed to have a job broadcasting for a rodeo show but ten days before the Miss Ponoka Stampede pageant they contacted her to tell her that they weren’t going to do the show that year.
Getting her full application, the required criminal background check, and more done all from Arizona where she had been team roping was a challenge. In fact, she air mailed her application package to a friend in Ponoka who hand walked it in on the day of the deadline.
A freak deal, Katy believes that everything happens for a reason. The pageant was a half day competition for the purpose of shortening the timeline for the contestants to allow more to run. There are a lot of young women who don’t have the time to commit to running for a title for two months - dropping school and/or work. Ponoka alleviated that in order to entice more girls to run.
“It’s near and dear to my heart...it’s the cowboy’s rodeo that gets voted lrage rodeo of the year every year,” says Katy who was crowned in April and then ran for Miss Rodeo Canada in November. “It was a fast turnaround for someone who had taken a couple years off.”
Miss Rodeo Canada had always been on her mind but not for a few years. Fate wouldn’t have it, she became the 2015 Miss Rodeo Canada and spent the year traveling with state queens and Miss Rodeo America.
Maintaining Your Rodeo Contestant Identity While Rodeo Queening
“For me, rodeo always came before queen - that was the biggest thing for me,” says Katy. “I am very lucky with the way that my family is set up that I am able to practice and compete… I am a rodeo cowgirl and hopefully that’s what made me a great rodeo queen.”
Roping all winter long with her parents in Arizona and competing in team roping, she was busy in the summer months going to all the rodeos.
“I made it a mission that a rodeo queen is not just a pretty face and that it didn’t matter what you did outside of the rodeo queen world, that you did more,” says Katy. Rodeos even started letting Katy make expedition runs - something that started when she was the Miss Ponoka Stampede queen with the 2014 Miss Rodeo Canada Nicole Briggs.
Spinning a team roping run at the Ponoka Stampede, Katy was able to head a steer for Nicole on the 100 foot box long score of the Ponoka arena. A big moment of it was not only the cowboys that were coaching her prior to the run but the crowds reaction, the fans reactions, the boards excitement, etc.
“We were forever daughters of the Ponoka Stampede,” says Katy with a laugh. All the rodeo committees were so excited that they let her do it again the next year and ride some really cool horses along the way as well.
“To have those opportunities and be able to do that because someone let me do more than the typical rodeo queen.”
Roping
World Series Team Roping Finals
“I’ve been able to rope there a few times but I’ve never done real well,” says Katy. Roping with her brother, they had one run that still haunts them where they almost had some good money won when the steer hopped out of Kyle’s heel loop. Four years ago now, they still think about it and talk about it. She joins Markie & Bronc and X-Factor’s Pace Freed as That Western Life’s top roping podcast guest fans.
Team Roping Canada Finals
Entered in the #12 finals they have a three-head average and then the top 20 make the short round. You then get three more steers in progressive rounds; if you miss you’re out. You get your three down and you want to start picking people off. Twenty becomes twelve and then a handful for the last.
Entering the short middle of the round they end up 4th in the second go of the short round. After the second, they were sitting first. With two feet left in her rope she got the steer hooked and turned; Kyle rolls in and gets two feet. They were the winners.
“I cried in the middle of the arena over winning this saddle, that was probably one of the most exciting things for me in my roping career,” says Katy.
Breakaway Roping
While most people know Katy as a team roper, she used to be predominantly a breakaway roper with it being her favorite event in high school and college. Making it to Nationals and placing in rounds, breakaway was her thing and she team roped because she wasn’t fast enough for goats and didn’t have a good enough barrel horse.
In Canada, especially, there was nowhere to go in breakaway after college. One jackpot a year was all that was left for women so “what was the point on focusing on that when you can focus on team roping?”
“I am so excited with the explosion that breakaway has seen in the last year. I think it’s so cool to see for women in rodeo,” says Katy. “It’s just cool to see in general to see breakaway as an option. For me personally it’s inspired me to crack back out.”
Katy has dabbled back in side events at a Canada jackpot and a partner event with a PRCA rodeo. We hope to see her out more in the rodeo arena through 2020 competing!
Canada just announced that they are adding breakaway roping as an option event for professional rodeos, extending that opportunity for women. Canadian rodeos are also co-approved with PRCA and WPRA but they also sanction all seven and now eight events.
A Career in Rodeo Broadcasting
Where It All Began With Miss Rodeo America Jennifer Smith
Meeting Jennifer Smith when she was Miss Rodeo America, Katy fell in love with her as a rodeo queen all the way back then in 1995. Watching her develop her career as a broadcaster post Miss Rodeo America, that is what started Katy’s interest in broadcasting at rodeo’s and, specifically, the National Finals Rodeo.
Rodeo Broadcasting Challenges
“Those challenges are there in any broadcasting field. Once you get in you’re in, generally speaking,” says Katy. That is something that Katy is prepared to live with because those people who have earned their way into those spots know what they are doing and are experts, making them hard to “unseat.”
“I hope to keep working hard for my sport so that, someday, if the opportunity does arise that I’ll be top of mind,” explains Katy. “It’s something i have always put out into the world but I am going to work my butt off so if I do get the offer, I’m prepared.”
Challenges today lie mainly in the sport. Not being a technical group, rodeo doesn’t get a lot of exposure. Rodeos, associations, committee, contestants - they aren’t used to it. A competitor at a professional level probably hasn’t had media training which will make Katy’s job in broadcasting harder.
Katy tries to adjust her interview style or questions to help the contestant find success. She has even done presentations and workshops with contestants for rodeo.
Building Contestant Profiles
If you look at PBR competitors, such as Chase Outlaw or JB Mauney, they allow them be themselves and, in fact, probably encourage them to be themselves. People begin to know them for it and be fans of them for it.
“I’ll never forget going to the PBR for the first time and they started playing the first few chords of ‘Bad to the Bone,’ … and the crowd went wild because they knew it was going to be JB Mauney,” says Katy. “That’s the world we need to live in for rodeo.”
Storytelling Through Prose
Literally a victim of carpal tunnel because of how many articles she can write in a short amount of time, Katy laughs that she’s finally got that under control.
“It really depends on what it is,” says Katy about finding stories to write. “The ones that stand out to me are, of course, the powerful ones, the ones that make you tear up. When I am writing a story and I’m trying to make a competitor shine - I’ll tear up! That’s when I know I’m on the right track.
“I’ll be at a rodeo and people make fun of me because, if someone gets a standing ovation, I’ll cry,” admits Katy. “If I find something that really makes me think ‘Wow! This is cool!’”
You can follow Katy Lucas on social media at her personal profiles or her KT Rodeo page. You can also hear her again on the next episode of the That Western Life podcast where we conclude our January Rodeo News Updates! Katy Lucas is currently a television personality on the Cowboy Channel where she continues to share her passion and love for the rodeo industry with the fans at home! Prior to taking that role, she joined us as a field reporter on the That Western Life podcast.