Kathy Parker
Managing Editor
GILLETTE, Wyo. —
Chance Cunningham loaded up to compete in the cutting at the National High School Rodeo finals with no horse.
Cunningham lost the horse that qualified him earlier this year, but that didn’t stop the Locust Grove junior from
helping his team.
“Shannon Hall has helped Oklahoma High School rodeo a lot this year since his daughter started,” Cunningham said. Hall, from Comanche, trains cutting horses and he’d been on the lookout for a horse Cunningham could be competitive on at nationals. The Cunninghams have been looking for a horse, but even though they’ve tried several, Chance had not yet found a good fit.
Hall sent them to South Dakota to ride a gelding he trained and showed as a colt.
“We’d been looking for a horse ever since mine got hurt. It was five hours out of the way,” Cunningham said. “It was a cool place. Not a cutting horse place, just a ranch.
“He’s not a show horse. He’s not stalled and put on the walker. He works on the ranch. He’s in shape from long
trotting somewhere.
“We just played around there on three or four cows. It wasn’t even like a cutting. I’d ridden him four times total. That’s it. I went and cut on him the next day.”
Cunningham scored 208 in the first round at the finals in Gillette, Wyo. The second round he upped his score to 218.
“That just goes to show how much I got the feel of him,” Cunningham said.
When it was all over, Cunningham received a buckle for fourth in a round and another for finishing in the top 10 in the cutting. He also got scholarship money.
Hall’s daughter, Whitney, won the national girls cutting title in her first time out as a freshman.
Cunningham is also a steer wrestler and he hopes to make a run at that title, along with winning the cutting next year. His hauling partner Levi Rudd, from Chelsea, finished eighth overall at Gillette and hauling partner Riley Duvall ended
up fourth. Next week Cunningham and his partners will start a rodeo run including Sidney, Iowa, Abilene, Texas, Dodge City, Kan., Pretty Prairie, Kan. and Moline, Kan.
Cunningham still has time to win the all around at National High School Finals, a feat he says no Oklahoma cowboy has accomplished in 60 years. The finals will move back to Springfield, Ill., next year. National High School finals are rotated every three years between Springfield, Ill., Farmington, N.M. and Gillette, Wyo.
Cunningham is riding colts getting ready for his family’s production sale Oct. 2. He is the son of Ronn and Lynn Cunningham of Rose.
A total of 41 teams from the U.S., Canada and Australia competed at the National High School Finals rodeo. Texas won this year, followed by Utah and Oklahoma in third place. The Oklahoma boys team finished fifth behind Texas, California, Alberta and South Dakota. The girls team finished second only to Utah.
