Montana State University-Northern Rodeo is back in the news this week as they head up four days of competition at the Bigger Better Barn in Havre this weekend. New Media Broadcasters had the chance to catch up with Lights and Skylights coach Doug Kallenberger, who reminisced about the best start in program history when his teams competed two weeks ago at Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyoming.
“The team did extremely well,” Kallenberger said. “I don’t ever think we’ve had that good a start to a season.”
“We had four individuals walk away with championships out of the first and second rodeos down there,” Kallenberger continued. “The women’s team walked away with a championship the first day,”
“After the dust settled and two rodeos in, the women’s team is sitting number one in the region and the men’s team is sitting third in the region, so right where we wanted to start our season.”
Coach Kallenberger said the reason why the team has been able to be successful early on starts with the upperclassmen on both teams.
“I have a great group of leadership,” Kallenberger said. “The older girls are really leading the team and I have a couple of older guys who are upperclassmen now, too.”
“They really stepped up in the leadership roles and the ways that they have stepped up have been tremendous,” Kallenberger continued.
It is not as common that there are as many days of entertainment as there are, but Kallenberger said that this has happened on one other occasion and explained why the Lights and Skylights are able to benefit off of this schedule.
“What happened was Dawson Community College couldn’t host the rodeo this year, so we stepped up because each region has to have ten rodeos,” Kallenberger said. “We stepped in and we’re going to have four days of rodeo.”
With the performances that the teams were able to achieve a couple weeks ago at their last rodeo, Coach Kallenberger has a focused mindset for his riders and a mentality that will remain unchanged because of the strong efforts from the performances two weeks ago.
“We’re just going to build on the momentum we have,” Kallenberger said. “We haven’t changed much in practice (and) our focus has remained the same.”
“You get it done in your individual events and then the team stuff follows suit,” Kallenberger continued. “(We will) try to think smart and think through things like we have been and let the chips fall where they fall.”
The schedule for the rodeo events at the Bigger Better Barn is:
Thursday at 7pm
Top 10 Friday at 7pm
Top 4 Shoot Out on Saturday at 6pm
Sunday at 11am
Tickets are $15 at the door, MSU-N students get in for $5 with ID, and seniors 65 and older as well as children ten and younger are free.
