Barrel racers thundered around the arena, bronc riders clung to bucking horses, and a Livermore-based drill team wove through tight equestrian formations as the Cow Palace in Daly City staged its Women of Rodeo event Saturday. The evening combined barrel racing, breakaway roping, bronc riding and bull riding into a single showcase featuring women's competitions alongside a men's bull riding competition for good measure.
A $3,000 Purse and a Path to Fort Worth
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the event offered a $3,000 purse for each women's event and typically draws about 2,500 spectators who come out to watch elite female athletes from around the region compete. Winners in Saturday's events could qualify for the Premier Women's Rodeo World Championship, set for next May in Fort Worth, Texas. The Cow Palace describes the night as combining barrel racing and breakaway roping with bronc and bull riding, and the event doubled as a tribute to women who have shaped the venue and the sport through art, production, photography, equity and promotion.
The Chronicle reports the evening also included a livestock show, a cowgirl happy hour with specialty drinks, and a vintage neon display. The Diablo Ladies, a Livermore-based rodeo drill team, performed equestrian maneuvers for the crowd. Per the event listing on NightOut, Saturday's program ran from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and wove in comedy, music, announcer Anthony Lucia, and bull-jumping performances alongside the competition — produced, as the listing notes, by Flying U Rodeo, described there as the Grand National Rodeo's producer for nearly six decades.
Honoring Sheila Varian and a Longer History
When the Cow Palace launched the first all-women's rodeo in 2023, it opened by honoring horsewoman Sheila Varian, who in 1961 became the first woman to win the Reined Cow Horse Open Championship at the same San Francisco-area venue, according to Western Horseman. That tribute connects Saturday's event to a much older thread in rodeo history: the Cow Palace traces the sport's first female bronc rider to Prairie Rose Henderson, who competed from around 1900 to the 1930s.
By the 1920s, cowgirls were regularly competing in bronc riding, trick riding and relay racing, a period that produced champions largely forgotten outside rodeo circles. At the 1923 Yankee Stadium Rodeo in New York, Donna Card Glover won the relay racing contest, according to the National Cowboy Museum. Lorena Trickey captured the McAlpin Trophy for champion all-around cowgirl at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1920, 1921 and 1924, and Lucyle Richards won the 1930 World Champion Saddle Bronc riding competition in Chicago before later taking the Girls Rodeo Association's saddle bronc title in 1951.
From the Girls Rodeo Association to Today's WPRA
Formal organization for women competitors arrived on February 28, 1948, when 38 women from Texas and Oklahoma formed the Girls Rodeo Association, according to the Texas State Historical Association. The group renamed itself the Women's Professional Rodeo Association in 1981 and now provides women in the United States and Canada opportunities to compete in barrel racing, team roping, breakaway roping and tie-down roping, per the WPRA. The organization's own materials describe it as the oldest women's sports organization in the country, while the Breakaway Roping Journal has called it the oldest women's professional sports organization in the world — a distinction the two sources frame differently even as they agree on the group's historic standing.
The path wasn't straight. The National Cowboy Museum notes that traditional cowgirl contests began moving out of the American rodeo mainstream after sponsor contests were introduced in 1931, a shift historian Mary Lou LeCompte characterized as a major setback for women because those contests emphasized beauty and attire over athletic skill. Serious competition for women declined further during the Great Depression and nearly vanished during World War II before the association helped restore women's barrel racing as a standard contest at most major rodeos. More than 600 rodeos agreed in 1980 to offer women prizes equal to those awarded to men by 1985.
The numbers today tell a story of steady growth, even if the exact figures vary by source. The Texas State Historical Association reported that as of 2018, the WPRA had more than 3,000 members, over 1,300 events and total payouts exceeding $5.2 million. The WPRA's own current account puts membership at more than 3,000, with over 1,500 events and payouts totaling more than $5 million. The Breakaway Roping Journal notes that more women are entering — and winning — jackpots and rodeos than ever before.
Kicking Off Grand National Rodeo Season
Saturday's event served as the kickoff to the Cow Palace's Grand National Rodeo season, which also includes a Junior Livestock Show. The Grand National Rodeo's main event returns Friday and Saturday, running from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. both nights at the Cow Palace Arena & Event Center, according to the venue's event listing. That weekend lineup is set to include riding and roping competitions, barrel racing and family entertainment, with Flying U Rodeo again running the show it has produced at the venue for decades.
