A 501C3 Foundation
A 501C3 Foundation
Lari Dee Guy is an eight-time Women’s Professional Rodeo World Champion, two-time National Finals of Breakaway Roping, and leading advocate for women in rodeo. Guy, of Abilene, Texas, teaches roping clinics across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia when she’s not competing in the arena.
I admit, I’d said “I roped like a girl,” on days when I didn’t score well, when I took a bad shot from more coils back than I can really reach, or when I just flat missed a steer I shouldn’t have. But did how I roped have anything to do with the fact that I was a girl? Heck no. I always knew that. I have always believed that as a girl, I could do anything in the world I wanted to. Why had I been using, and hearing, “Rope Like A Girl,” my whole life, as a negative?
When I really started thinking about that saying, it lit a fire in me. It got me thinking about the young girls who come to my schools in South Dakota, Hawaii, Australia, and everywhere in between. Those girls come to me believing that one day, they’ll be the next Trevor Brazile. They don’t have a doubt in their minds at 10 years old that they’ll see women roping at the Thomas & Mack someday. I felt that way when I was 10, too. So why, then, were we letting these girls hear the words “Rope Like A Girl” like it’s a bad thing? Why would we do anything or say anything to discourage that same 10 year old girl from chasing her dreams? What gets into us that we start to doubt ourselves?
Rope Like A Girl is here to erase doubt. It’s not about beating the boys. It means being proud to be a woman living her dreams, by her own rules, without limitations.