Breakaway success: Why cowgirls are once again knocking at the NFR’s door

Whenever she hangs up her ropes, Jackie Crawford will go down as one of the best ever to compete.

Her 23 world titles are second in the history of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association behind only Wanda Harper Bush, who won the last of her 32 titles in 1969.

Among Crawford’s more impressive feats is capturing a world title at the inaugural National Finals Breakaway Roping while she was six months pregnant with her daughter Journey.

In March, she took home her first RodeoHouston title, leaving her with just one box to check: competing in the Thomas &Mack Center during the National Finals Rodeo.

“That will always linger there. I can’t make it go away,” Crawford says. “That’s one of those I will always dream of.”

This year’s breakaway roping champion will be crowned Dec. 3 and 4 at the South Point. Given that the NFBR is scheduled to return there in 2025, time may be running out for the 41-year-old known as the Queen of Breakaway Roping.

‘Growth has just been phenomenal’

It’s the fastest event in rodeo, often resulting in winning times of 2 seconds or less.

After a calf leaves the chute, a cowgirl gives chase. Once she ropes it around its neck, she stops her horse, pulling the rope taut and causing the nylon string that connects the rope to her saddle horn to break away. That’s when the timer stops the clock, ending the action without the calf being thrown to the ground or tied.

It’s also the fastest-growing event in rodeo. In 2019, breakaway was part of 30 competitions sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. This year, it was included in 500 rodeos. (Surprisingly, there’s still room to grow as the PRCA puts on 800 rodeos a year.)

“This growth has just been phenomenal,” says Jimmie Munroe, the ProRodeo Hall of Famer who’s on her third stint as president of the WPRA.

The road to this current boom, though, has been long and frequently rocky.

A breakaway national champion was first crowned by the National High School Rodeo Association in 1953, yet the event wasn’t added to the Girls Rodeo Association, the precursor of the WPRA, until 1974. Breakaway world champions were crowned that year and the next, but the title wasn’t awarded again until 1982, when Las Vegas’ Pam Minick took the crown.

Two decades later, Crawford won what was until that point breakaway roping’s largest prize: a saddle, a bumper pull trailer and $6,000.

“And I thought, ‘I’ll never see this again a day in my life,’ ” she says. “ ‘This is it. This is the top of the mountain, right here.’ ”

On March 11, 2023, Crawford left The American Rodeo in Arlington, Texas, with a check for $600,000 for a single day’s work.

Perfect timing

Shelby Boisjoli-Meged came along at just the right time.

The 26-year-old grew up in Langdon, Alberta, but relocated to the rodeo hotbed of Stephenville, Texas, which Crawford also calls home. Boisjoli-Meged moved there with her sisters and fellow ropers Makayla and Marissa in search of rodeo opportunities that just weren’t available in Canada.

She was attending Ranger College in 2017 when WPRA ropers began lobbying for their inclusion in PRCA events in the Columbia River Circuit states of Oregon and Washington.

In 2019, Boisjoli-Meged was the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association’s reserve breakaway roping champion. The same year, Chicago’s Windy City Roundup added breakaway and offered a payout equal to its core events. Crawford took home the $50,000 top prize.

“After that happened, I feel like it just blew the ceiling off of breakaway roping,” Boisjoli-Meged says. “All of the jackpots took off, and they paid a crazy amount of money. There were girls making over $200,000 a year at the breakaway jackpots. Everything just took off after that.”

She joined the WPRA in 2020 and qualified for the first National Finals Breakaway Roping that year. That inaugural event took place in Arlington alongside the National Finals Rodeo during its pandemic-related exile from Las Vegas. Since then, the competition has served as a lead-in to the NFR, first at Orleans Arena before moving to its current home at the South Point in 2022.

Last year, Boisjoli-Meged won her first gold buckle along with an NFBR-record $33,157 over the two days of competition to finish with a single-season earnings record of $197,706.

That capped a remarkable year that included her wedding to Haven Meged, the 2019 tie-down roping world champion.

“I was on such a high that I guess I didn’t realize how surreal it was and how great of a year it really was,” Boisjoli-Meged says. “And then I think it took until this year when I’m struggling a little bit to realize like, ‘Wow, last year was incredible.’ I don’t think I’ll ever have another year just like that.”

Similar path as barrel racing

Marriage aside, years like that would have been tough to fathom for the 38 women — including National Cowgirl Hall of Fame members Isora DeRacy Young, Blanche Altizer Smith and Betty Barron Dusek — who came together on Feb. 28, 1948, in San Angelo, Texas, to form the Girls Rodeo Association.

“They didn’t want to just carry flags and be in different acts,” Munroe says. “They wanted to have the opportunity to compete.”

The GRA hosted its own events, but its members also began lobbying rodeo committees to include them. Given the choice of adding cutting, bronc riding or barrel racing, it was the latter that caught on.

“Well, for one thing, there was no stock involved,” Munroe says, noting that the only added expense for rodeos was the prize money. “It was very easy to understand. It was like a horse race. There wasn’t judging involved; the fastest time won.”

Munroe adds that the cowgirls “really had to dress up back then, so it was colorful,” which contributed to barrel racing’s appeal.

Still, during the inaugural National Finals Rodeo in Dallas in 1959, barrel racing was nowhere to be seen.

The ladies wouldn’t join the NFR until 1967.

That was the last time an event was added to its ranks.

No room at the Thomas &Mack

“It’s not dissimilar to how we saw the growth and excitement behind barrel racing,” Paul Woody says of the rise of breakaway roping. “Through the growth and a lot of people pushing and doing what they did, it was finally able to be added and became an equal-paying event at the NFR. Now, there’s not a single rodeo that takes place across the country that doesn’t include barrel racing.”

But Woody, the chief marketing officer of the PRCA, cautions that it won’t be easy to add breakaway as the NFR’s eighth event.

“The reality is, between site logistics, economic considerations, the timing of the event, there’s just some things that still have to be worked through before we would be able to host that event in the building.”

The Thomas &Mack Center already accommodates the top 15 competitors in bareback riding, barrel racing, bull riding, saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling and tie-down roping, as well as the top 15 headers and top 15 heelers in team roping — plus their horses and the event stock — during each of the NFR’s 10 days.

There simply isn’t room right now for another event, Woody says. It wouldn’t be right, he adds, to let all the other competitors house their horses on-site but make the breakaway competitors find other accommodations.

“It’s an unfair ask if we would say, ‘Well, you get to be in there, but you don’t get to have the same amenities or credentials that come with competing at the world championships.’ ”

Bigger than prize money

Crawford isn’t ready to give up on her dream.

As recently as 2011, she was the only cowgirl she knew of who was making a living solely through roping. Now, Crawford says, there are several doing that, and she sees parents steering their girls toward breakaway as a career path.

She’s performing so well, and the money has gotten so big, that her husband, 10-time NFR qualifier Charly Crawford, stepped back from his team roping career in 2021 to support her and their children.

The prize pool at this year’s National Finals Breakaway Roping has increased to $300,000, up from $250,000, but that’s dwarfed by the approximately $1.5 million awarded in each event at the National Finals Rodeo.

That isn’t what motivates Crawford to want to be a part of the NFR, she says, adding that she can’t recall ever seeing a retired athlete say that what they miss most about competing is the money.

“For me, it’s the experiences,” Crawford says. “It is the atmospheres. That’s the stuff that I’ll always remember.”

She’s gotten a taste of the NFR, having assisted Trevor Brazile during one of his triple crown years.

“Being back there in that tunnel with those guys was the most unbelievable feeling, the most electrifying feeling, that is indescribable to me,” Crawford says.

The experience left her craving more.

“I just want to run one with that group of elite athletes. The guys, the barrel racers. I just wanna be a part of it, and I want to run a calf in the middle of it.”

Waiting for history

While Boisjoli-Meged waits for her time to shine at the NFR, her horse Lil Punch has been there and done that.

Last year, Haven Meged set a Thomas &Mack tie-down roping record of 6.4 seconds aboard his wife’s then-6-year-old gelding.

“I’m kinda jealous my horse got to go there before me,” Boisjoli-Meged admits.

She attended her first National Finals Rodeo in 2016 to support her cousin, saddle bronc rider Jake Watson. Their whole family was there cheering him on, so she knows that taking to the dirt inside the Thomas &Mack would mean the world to more than just her.

“I know the sense of pride I felt. I was teary-eyed and just so excited for my cousin when I got to watch him compete there,” she says. “So I think of all the grandparents and the moms and dads and the siblings and all the families and friends that will just be so excited to see all that hard work pay off.”

Boisjoli-Meged can see that day in her mind, and she’s convinced it will come.

“I don’t know how any of us breakaway ropers would even be able to catch a calf if we got to rope there, because we’d all just be crying,” she says. “We’d be so excited to be there. It would mean so much to us.” ◆