Rodeo athletes typically spend the summer racking up prize money at local events in order to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo at the end of the year in Las Vegas, a competition among the top 15 athletes from each discipline in what is considered the Super Bowl of the rodeo world.
Women have limited opportunities in the sport. Breakaway roping — in which riders throw a breakaway lasso around a calf released from a chute — and barrel racing are the only individual events open to them. In fact, the 2020 season was the first since 1959 in which the P.R.C.A. — which sanctions local rodeo competitions — included breakaway roping in its annual finals, though as a separate ticketed event. Until then, just one of its seven events, barrel racing, included women competing by themselves.
And the financial rewards for women are often small. By the end of the 2021 season in September, for example, Crawford had earned $36,200 at P.R.C.A. rodeos, which got her back into the finals. By comparison, bull riders, all of whom are men, would have earned at least $100,000 on their way to qualifying.
But the fact that breakaway roping is now being included in the National Finals Rodeo and other rodeos indicates that the perception of it as a niche event within the rodeo world is changing.
And Crawford, though she did not repeat as champion this year, finishing sixth, is determined to ride the wave.