Lynette Brodoway of Brooks, Alberta, Canada, is having a banner season in Canadian Pro Rodeo.
Brodoway and her 2023 voted Horse with the Most Heart SR Boots On Fire, a 10-year-old gelding she calls ‘Cowboy’, have ran off with the 2024 season. As the regular season closed out, Brodoway finished as the Canadian Pro Rodeo Association’s barrel racing season leader with $43,604.54 in season earnings.
To add to her success, Brodoway was crowned the 2024 SMS Equipment Pro Tour Champion Barrel Racer with a total of 1,410 total points and had a stellar SMS Equipment Pro Tour Finals IPE & Stampede in Armstrong, British Columbia, winning the rodeo with a 16.02-second run, worth $3,000, held August 31, 2024.
“This year he is winning more rodeos and maybe not as consistent,” said Brodoway, 63, the 2023 CFR Barrel Racing Champion. “He doesn’t really do anything wrong, but you can tell the pressure is different this year.”
Brodoway is also sitting 10th in the Maple Leaf Circuit with $10,303.23 won on the season.
“I don’t let myself feel secure because you have to stay hungry,” said Brodoway, who has been rodeoing professional since 2016 and works as a well-known trainer and clinician in Canada. “I have to keep the pressure on because those girls are tough [in Canadian Pro Rodeo]. I’m just one that goes one run at a time. The chips will fall where they may.”
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In 2023, Brodoway entered up and made consistent runs on “Cowboy” but has concluded that she needs to take a step back and be more selective on her entering process.
“I went to a lot last year. I can’t do this year what I did with him [in 2023] because it was maybe a little too much last year,” she said. “He’s also telling me not to run him back-to-back. We’ll go to a rodeo; try to give him a day off and then go to another one.”
Trying to give some relief to “Cowboy” Brodoway tried running “Poncho”, a 6-year-old gelding that she futurities on, but the horse has not taken to the rodeo scene as well as she hoped.
“He’s a very nice horse, but he is not handling the rodeo setting,” she said. “I’ve just jackpotted him. He was hurt last year as a futurity horse, so he was out that summer. This winter I got him to a derby, and he did well. He’s a very nice horse, but he is not handling the rodeo setting. I have some more derby’s this fall and will do some things to get some experience under his belt.”
Staying Grounded
Even trainers and clinicians need something or someone to keep them grounded and fortunately for Brodoway she’s found just help she needs. One line of help is reading or listening to tapes by author John Maxwell.
“The first book I read of his was Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn,” she said. “It changed my competition attitude around because I am a perfectionist. I’m much more aware of it now, and I’ve learned to have better control over that. I hate making mistakes, but if you don’t make mistakes you don’t learn. I started looking at my mistakes in a much better way.”
Lynette also finds that making a quick phone call to her younger brother, a Seven-time CFR qualifier and Two-time Canadian Champion Team Roping Heeler, Dwight Wigemyr (56).
“Your support group is so important. Having the right people around me is probably the most important part. When I do get kind of off course, or my attitude can kind of get going on me I can call Dwight. His mental game is so good. I have him in my court.”
How did barrels come into play?
Barrel racing wasn’t the way that Brodoway was raised.
Brodoway was raised in a team roping family. Her parents Ivan (83), who just sold his last rope horse nearly 3 years ago, and Marlene Wigemyr team roped as well as her accomplished brother Dwight.
“Back in my day when you grew up my parents were young, and they were team roping and I followed them around and team roped. I became an accomplished header at that time, and I had a brother who was awesome and some of his friends so I would rope with them.”
Brodoway, who originally heeled, especially for her mom at the all-girl ropings, switched to the head side when she noticed her brother and his friends, including Rocky Dallyn, the 2002 Olympic Rodeo Champion Heeler and one of the few Canadian pioneer cowboys to getting team roping into the Candian Finals, were getting better at catching feet.
“I decided to go heading and turn them for them,” she said. “Dwight became one of the best.”
Though the entire Wigemyr family were committed team ropers and trained their own horses, Brodoway knew deep down she always had the itch to run barrels.
“Every team roping horse we had as a kid I was working on the barrels,” she said. “That was my passion. But things were different back then. Now-a-days parents are following kids around. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but it wasn’t like that when I was young because we just didn’t have the money.”
Fast forward to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when Brodoway married Ken Brodoway and her dream for barrel racing was still alive and well.
“I thought I was going to pursue more barrel racing. That’s when I started training a barrel horse for myself and futuried him and then sold him. I just kept doing that and then was training for others. That’s kind of the process that has gone on here since the early ‘90s.”
Now, as accomplished as she is, Brodoway has hung up her team ropes and puts her heart and soul into barrel racing.
“To be good at something you have to put a lot into it, and I don’t have the time for it anymore,” she said.
Running for Wacey
What has initially lit a huge flame in Brodoway’s barrel racing fire came from a tragic loss to the Brodoway family in 2001. Brodoway’s oldest son, Wacey, was killed in a horrific accident on October 11, 2001. He was 16 years old.
Wacey and his late girlfriend Brett Jacobson were hit by a potato truck nearly 5 miles away from their house while crossing the highway and were killed instantly.
“He’s never forgotten, but our hearts are healed. It was a tragedy at the time. It took me some time to get over that. Josey (37, Brodoway’s youngest son, who made the CFR in the heeling in 2006) at that time was 14, and so it obviously changes your family dynamic. I wanted to be home while he was home.
“Pain is pain, and lots of people go through it,” she continued. “Everybody has a story. I think how we overcome is what’s important.”
With the hopelessness of losing a child, Brodoway stepped away from riding horses, but there’s usually an angel with a message and that angel moved her to step back up in the saddle.
“God, in time, healed our hearts. I was angry and a lot of things. Honestly what moved me was I felt Wacey tell me, ‘Mom, go ride your horses.’ God has used the horse for me in many ways. A horse will do that to you. What is it they say? ‘The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.’ The horse is for sure at the root of my healing.
“People know that you can overcome and move on,” she continued. “I know that Wacey would be proud of me and of our family and all that we’ve done. We moved on and that’s what he would want for us as well.”
Canadian goals
With her sights set on competing at the Canadian Finals Rodeo 50th anniversary in Edmonton, Alberta, Oct. 2–5 and the Maple Leaf Circuit Finals in Agribition, Regina, Saskatchewan, Nov. 27–30, Brodoway focuses on enjoying every moment.
“It’s in a new facility, there’s more added money, so that is the goal,” said Brodoway, as she eye’s a potential back-to-back Canadian Championship title. “Circuit finals would be No. 2. This year my focus has been on enjoying the process more than I have in the past—enjoying the people, the process and being grateful for where I’m at.”
As she pursues more titles in the coming months, Brodoway is always proud to be a Canadian rodeo competitor.
“It works for me because I can still be a wife, a mom and a grandma,” Brodoway said. “I am honestly in a place where I’m extremely grateful that I get to rodeo, and I get to rodeo in Canada. I get to rodeo on my terms. I don’t have to sacrifice anything about my character or who I am. I like the people—we’re tight in many ways. I am extremely grateful to get to do what I do here in Canada.”
