No longer confined to the Wild West, rodeo is a sport for everyone. BY RANDY EDWARDS; PHOTOS BY DEMI MARTIN/NEW VIEW PHOTOGRAPHY
family All in the R
uss Spreckelmeier won his first rodeo prize money at age 11, riding a steer. It was $8, which was both not very much and just enough. “Man, I knew it, then. I knew, this is what I’m gonna do. In all honesty, it felt like a natural talent.” Spreckelmeier, 57, of Springboro, Ohio, has been riding bulls and broncs ever since, even throughout his six years of service in the Marines. At 5 feet, 5 inches and 155 pounds, Spreckelmeier says, “I wasn’t made for football. Couldn’t play basketball. But the chicks all liked it ’cause I rodeoed. Wore Wranglers and boots to school every day.” By strapping on spurs and mounting the bucking broncs, he was following in the bootprints of his father, Richard Spreckelmeier, who learned to ride horses bareback in California, during his stint in the Marines. “Rodeo was really popular in California at the time. They had some real stock out there,” the senior Spreckelmeier says. “When I came back to Ohio, they were just playing around with Wild West shows and such.” That was in 1959, but in the past half century, rodeo in the East has spread from county fairs to Madison Square Garden. Throughout the U.S. and Canada, it’s become a big-ticket sport, and like the county fairs that spawned it, rodeo is often
32 OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • MARCH 2021
