Little rodeo, big dreams: Junior competitors also hit Vegas seeking world titles

The National Finals Rodeo action may draw most of the early December visitors to Las Vegas to the Thomas & Mack Center. But a miniature version two miles away draws roughly 800 cowboys and cowgirls chasing a combined million-dollar purse and a silver championship buckle.

At the Junior World Finals in the Las Vegas Convention Center, youth competitors crowd banquet halls — followed by as many as a dozen proud relatives — to receive their back numbers and leather qualifying jackets that make them feel like the rodeo stars that the rest of Las Vegas showed up for.

“One year it was like 65 degrees out — it was hot, not at all cold — and every kid had their dang jacket on, like, ‘This is the best thing ever,’ ” Brilynn Bentley, JWF assistant general manager, said. “To see every kid walk out of that room with a jacket, knowing that whether they win the event or not, they walk away with something saying that they came to Vegas, it’s great.”

Growing into Junior World Finals

The idea for a junior competition to run concurrently with the NFR came out of an initiative from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and Las Vegas Events, JWF general manager Bo Gardner said. Saddle bronc and bareback riding had declining membership in the professional organization, and they were looking for a way to bolster the ranks of future competitors.

The program has nearly doubled in entries since it started as Junior NFR in 2015. The rodeo lets competitors as young as 8 and as old as 19 compete for a world championship title in nine possible events: bull riding, bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, girls and boys breakaway, team roping, breakaway, barrel racing and pole bending.

A few years later, Las Vegas Events rebranded it as the Junior World Finals to capture more sponsorship opportunities — expanding the purse to roughly $1 million in collective cash and prizes and connecting contestants to sponsorships of their own.

The competitions run in the daytime during the NFR’s 10-day takeover, Dec. 7 through 16. Las Vegas Events sets up the Wrangler Rodeo Arena, bringing in the dirt, spectator stands and chutes needed to turn a convention hall — already filled with NFR fans visiting Cowboy Christmas there — into a rodeo.

Then they hand over the reins to partner producers managing qualifiers held throughout the year. All are run as a slack, or overflow competition, to encourage maximum participation.

“We want to get as many kids as we can because our goal is to grow the youth involvement in rodeo,” Gardner said. “If we just did a (performance) rodeo, we’re only looking at a limited number of kids. That’s not what we want.”

Getting to Vegas

Riders in the Fenner family have had their eyes set on making it to Las Vegas each year. The family of six from Lovelock will travel 50,000 miles to 17 states annually to compete in barrel racing and pole bending events. Thirteen-year-old Rhea, 11-year old Rori and 5-year-old Riot start each year with a vision board of what they want to accomplish that year — and Las Vegas is on it.

The girls are constantly working toward those goals. They ride their horses daily, strengthening them on a sand dune track on the family’s ranch and practicing barrel turns by riding down the street and circling traffic signs.

“They are the happiest when they’re out there,” their mother, Ann-Marie Fenner, said. “Rori gets cranky — if we have a day where we can’t ride, she’s a little beast to live with. We’re like, ‘What’s wrong? Oh, you haven’t ridden your horses today.’ ”

Qualifying for JWF differs from other nationwide youth competitions. Instead of relying on an average point score to get into the finals, contestants in most of the events can qualify in two ways: They can be the outright winner or runner-up in one qualifier or they can make it through an averaged point score based on their performance at multiple qualifying events.

The Fenners knew they’d head south to Las Vegas by late June. Rori had already outright qualified in junior divisions of barrels and poles, with a 13.77-second run in her barrels qualifier.

With some Vegas runs already achieved, the Fenner girls are dreaming bigger — competing at the Thomas & Mack Center in the NFR. The family determined they can’t afford to buy an NFR-caliber horse, so they’ve bought studs and mares to make bloodlines that will be ready for the big stage.

“We’re just trying to create a legacy for them to grow into,” their mother said.

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