In the running

WAUPACA – In late June, Taylyn Claussen, 12, went to Guthrie, Oklahoma to compete at the National Junior High Finals Rodeo. Her specialty is barrel racing but before she could ride her horse she had to ride the storm out.
The tornado rolled in around 2 a.m. It was chaos with traffic jams as hundreds of other competitors were rolling in pulling horse trailers. Everyone was heading for the Lazy E Arena.
“The rain, the wind, the dark. We were about two miles from the arena. We ended up sleeping through the worst part of it but five minutes later we were getting evacuated,” said her mother, Alysia.
Once the tornado passed and things returned to normal, the rodeo started and Taylyn would compete against other riders from five Canadian provinces and others from Mexico, Australia, Hawaii and Alaska. She would be riding a 15-year-old quarter horse named Toasty.
It was her second time competing at nationals. Last year, she raced in Des Moines as Wisconsin’s Junior High Rookie of the Year and as the reserve champion barrel racer. She tipped on both days, meaning she knocked over a barrel and that is penalized by having five seconds added to your time. Her mother said she had a case of the nerves.

Not this year. Taylyn again qualified as Wisconsin’s reserve champion barrel racer and in Guthrie, she raced twice and her times were totaled. She placed 24th out of 210 riders. She missed placing in the top 20 by two-tenths of a second. Taylyn was the only rider from the Midwest to place in the top 25.

The rider
Taylyn is like any other 12 year old. She plays basketball and softball and she’s going into seventh grade and has many friends. She resembles a young Éowyn, the noblewoman (played by Miranda Otto) in Peter Jackson’s film series, The Lord of the Rings. There are scenes of her riding her horse into battle with the other Riders of Rohan.
Her mother (metaphorically) says she was born on a horse as she was riding horses two days before she was induced into labor. Alysia is a lifelong horse rider and has competed in professional rodeo.
She started Taylyn off by riding a couple ponies and later on her father’s quarter horse, Bailey. Taylyn jokes that she “stole” her father’s horse as that it is the horse she started competing with in the Pee Wee division when she was five years old.

Taylyn would earn her first belt buckle (trophies are rare in rodeo) as a world champion 2D barrel racer at the age of five. Later she moved into the Little Britches division. Age divisions in rodeo resemble the age groupings for elementary, middle and high school such as junior high rodeos are for youth in grades fifth through eighth grades.
Now she has amassed a large collection of belt buckles by mostly competing in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Barrel racing is her main focus but she also competes in pole bending, goat tying, team roping and breakaway roping.
Her best time in breakaway roping is 2.65 seconds. If you were to blink, you would miss the calf charging out of the chute, Taylyn and Toasty charging after it and a second later the rope is around the calf’s neck and the rope breaks away off the saddle—the moment the clock stops at 2.65 seconds.
Her father, Jason Claussen, pulls out the dummy she practices roping on. It’s a fake calf that he hooks it up to a four wheeler and skids it around so she can practice lassoing a moving target.
The rodeo belt buckles are not the only thing she wins. She also races for the jackpot. Her father estimates she’s won around a couple thousand dollars on Toasty.
“I won the 2D race at Sherry Cervi’s and won $352 bucks,” said Taylyn.
Sherry Cervi is an American professional rodeo cowgirl who has won four world championships in barrel racing. She hosts a youth-only barrel racing event in Minnesota.
“Also, I won these, too, for all-around” said Taylyn and she displayed some custom-stitched leather belts.
The rodeo season runs from April to the end of September. The family travels to rodeo events about twice a month. During the week, Taylyn practices two hours a day five times a week with Toasty. “I’ll practice and pulls and barrels but I don’t go fast. It’s slow work. I don’t want to run her legs off,” she said.
Her family expects Taylyn and Toasty to ride together throughout her high school rodeo career.
“I want to do college rodeo, and then professional rodeo. I want to make it to the NFR [National Finals Rodeo]. That’s all that I want to do,” she said.

The horse
Toasty is named after her bloodline ancestor, Toast to Dash, a champion racing quarter horse that lived from 1994 to 2016 and after his racing career, he sired many other winning racers.
Alysia acquired the four-year-old sorrel and started training her but life got in the way. They found a house and had to sell the horse to help make the down payment. She said it broke her heart.
Toasty went to a person she knew but unknown to her, that person had problems with Toasty. So did the next person and the next person. During this time, Toasty had lived in Kansas and Texas.
Many months later, Alysia got a Facebook message: Do you know this horse?
This is what she learned: the new owner cannot control the horse, cannot brush the horse, cannot get the horse in a trailer and cannot halter the horse.
“This is kind of crazy. I never had issues with the horse. The owner got in touch with me and verified everything. She asked if I wanted the horse back. At the time, money was tight and I said this is what I’ve got and she said okay,” Alysia said.
She had a good friend in Texas that picked up Toasty and they met in Appleton.
“You know it took us over an hour to load this horse,” she said.
“Seriously? C’mon,” Alysia said to Toasty. “We’re going home.”
Toasty walked right into the trailer and within two weeks, six-year-old Taylyn was on the horse running barrels.
She no longer rode Bailey. Her focus now was on Toasty and as she and the horse got to know each other, her times around the barrels skyrocketed.
“Nobody could touch her. There was no kid in rodeo that could keep up with her. She was winning by two, three seconds,” said Jason.
“And I was winning with the seniors. I was clocking times with the 18-year-olds,” said Taylyn.
“She just wanted to be home,” Jason said of Toasty. “At the end of the day, it’s the bond. Not every person clicks with a horse. That barrel horse—I can’t ride that horse. We hate each other and we’ve come to that agreement. Nope. We just stay away from each other and we’re okay with that,” said Jason.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Makes me want to tear up and cry. She’s a pain in the ass horse, she moody, cranky, quirky. But she’s made Talyn such a fantastic rider,” said Alysia.