Hailing from the tiny central Utah town of Koosharem, population 251, rodeo queen Mikyla Bagley had one condition for moving to the Salt Lake Valley for a job opportunity — she wasn’t coming without her horses.
With its dense urban environment, that would be difficult, but she and her mother felt good about her moving to Bluffdale in Salt Lake County. Though they had trouble at first finding a place for her to live, within three hours of Bagley applying for a listing her mother passed along to her one day, the owners called to offer her the room. The owners didn’t know why, but they said they felt good about Bagley.
Bagley had no idea until she moved in that her new home was in a relatively rural area with horse stables and a roping arena in her neighbor Ken Groves’ backyard. The same week she moved in, she met her future husband, Kaden Olsen. The two now live in a different house in the same neighborhood, practicing team roping every day with Groves in his arena. For Bagley, this was another witness that God cares about what she cares about.
“He wants you to go where you’re supposed to be, and He wants more for you,” said Bagley, a content writer for Intermountain Farmers Association.
In April, Bagley joined Jaid Stowell, Madison McQuivey and Paige Clem as one of four active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be selected for the 2024 Utah Cowgirl Collective.
A part of the Days of ‘47 Rodeo, the collective began last year as a way to preserve and promote the western agricultural lifestyle through community service and education. Applicants go through a rigorous selection process that examines their horsemanship skills and commitment to community service, narrowing the pool down to six ambassadors who commit to spend a year performing 300 hours of community service before qualifying for a $10,000 scholarship. The six ambassadors also serve as flag bearers and cow chasers at the Days of ‘47 Rodeo, which runs July 19-24.
‘Make their day a little brighter’
Horsemanship, ranching and rodeo are more than hobbies or jobs to these cowgirls; they comprise a lifestyle and heritage they want to keep alive.
Stowell, a 20-year-old barrel racer, says cowboys and cowgirls exemplify toughness. In fact, she knows Utah rodeo competitors to be among the toughest. But for the Southern Utah University agriculture student from Parowan, Utah, the preservation of the western lifestyle is a practical cause, too. Many people today, she said, are disconnected from the sources of their food and struggle to maintain a healthy diet. Through her service project for the collective, she plans to focus on nutrition and build awareness of the importance of agriculture.
She sees the collective’s service requirement as an opportunity to act more selflessly within a sport that demands extensive resources and time away from family and friends in order to practice skills and care for horses.
As much as participating in rodeo can feel “selfish” at times, the cowgirls have found ways to use it to help less fortunate children, including helping run a stick rodeo — a rodeo for disabled children — put on by the Mascot Miracles Foundation.
“I’ve felt so full since then just being able to serve and help somebody make their day a little brighter,” Stowell said.
McQuivey — a BYU–Idaho graduate pursuing a career as a physician assistant — volunteers with Courage Reins, a nonprofit organization in Highland, Utah, that does equine-based therapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Now she wants to help children with literacy disabilities by using horses as a tool to help them feel confident in reading to others.
Meanwhile, Bagley and Clem are working together to organize a rodeo for children in hospitals or who have disabilities.
“Rodeo was always very empowering,” Bagley said. “You always look at little kids, and they tell you they want to be three things when they grow up: They want to be a rock star, an astronaut or a cowboy, and the reason they want to be a cowboy is because they see this lifestyle and they see how hardworking they are and how determined they are, and it’s just empowering to them.”
Empowerment is just one of the values the cowgirls say has been instilled in them by their work. Clem — a Utah State University sophomore who trains horses with her grandfather in Reese, Utah — has had to learn patience as she has worked to earn trust with her horses. She also sees the discipline and work ethic she has developed, since, in the world of ranching, one can’t pick and choose what to do and when to do it. The animals need to be cared for.
‘You can’t have one without the other’
But central to the growth of these cowgirls has been the faith they have had to rely on.
Like Bagley, relocating to the greater Salt Lake area was unsettling for McQuivey since her hometown of Logandale, Nevada, has less than 3,000 people — neither did she have the company of the horse she raised herself, True. She grew up traveling to rodeos with her grandmother and working on ranches with family friends in the summers, one of whom was Stowell.
Feeling trapped in her apartment in Highland, McQuivey prayed every day she could return to her old life. Soon she began knocking on the doors of neighbors, asking if she could ride their horses. Half the time they told her no. But soon, her father-in-law introduced her to the Mendenhalls, a couple that allowed her to use their horses and eventually move into the studio apartment above their barn.
“I’ve had to have a lot of faith in knowing that my interests and hobbies and everything that I love is important to God just as much as it’s important to me,” McQuivey said.
Faith in her family and among most in the western community extends to how they treat their animals, says Stowell, because cows and horses are Heavenly Father’s creations. “If I just have a safe horse at the end of the day, that’s what’s important because I recognize that Heavenly Father has blessed me with these horses, and that’s more important than winning.”
Clem says that horses and rodeo can’t come without faith. Regardless of belief, “everyone will bow their head for the prayer to be said [at the start of every rodeo], and so then you kind of have that feeling of peace wash over you because you know that He’s there.”
She added that even when she does get bucked off her horse or have some other accident, she still looks for the simple blessings, like her injury not being worse.
“You can’t have one without the other; you gotta include your faith in this lifestyle,” Clem said.
Stowell noted that in the interview process for the collective, the executive director mentioned that, being originally from Texas, he’s noticed something different about the cowgirls in Utah — they work harder, and are kinder and more compassionate. Stowell thinks that’s because of the influence of the Church.
“I think it just fosters ... a love for your community ... and how important it is to know where you came from and honoring their traditions, too.”
