From Dale Rosa to the National Stage: Our 2026 NLBRA Finals Journey
- Whitney Widick
- Aug 7
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 7
Some accomplishments deserve more than a quick congratulations.
This is one of them.
This summer, three Dale Rosa Equine students, Ella Gerdes, Loretta Widick, and Bonnie Widick, loaded up their horses and headed west to Oklahoma City for the 2026 National Little Britches Rodeo Association Finals.
Seeing their names on a National Finals draw was incredible.
Watching them ride through the gate at the OKC Fairgrounds was even better.
But if you only saw the pictures from Oklahoma, you missed most of the story.
Because Oklahoma wasn't the accomplishment.
Everything it took to earn the right to be there was.
You Don't Just Sign Up for Nationals
The 2026 NLBRA Finals were held June 28 through July 4 at the OKC Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City.
And you don't simply decide you'd like to go to Nationals and send in an entry.
To qualify, contestants have to earn six Top 6 placings in an event throughout the season.
Six.
That means the road to Oklahoma started months before we ever pointed a truck and trailer west.
It started at regular-season rodeos.
At practices.
At home in the arena when nobody was watching.
It meant hauling horses weekend after weekend. Early mornings. Late nights. Feeding horses before themselves. Tack changes. Pattern work. Drills. Trying something. Fixing something. Trying it again.
It meant good runs that gave them confidence and rough runs that made them question everything.
Missed barrels.
Knocked poles.
Bad approaches.
Lost stirrups.
Horses having opinions.
Kids having opinions.
Parents probably having a few opinions too.
There were frustrating practices. There were mistakes. There were nerves. There were runs where things finally clicked, followed by runs where it felt like somebody unplugged everything we thought we'd figured out.
That's horses.
That's rodeo.
And that's learning.
These kids had to keep showing up anyway.
A qualification wasn't handed to Ella, Loretta, or Bonnie because they were Dale Rosa students.
They earned every single one.
That's what made Oklahoma so special.
Ella Gerdes: Becoming the Horsewoman It Took to Get There
Ella qualified for Nationals in THREE Senior Girls events:
Barrel Racing.
Pole Bending.
Trail Course.
Three events that ask very different things of a horse and rider.
And to us, that says a whole lot more than simply, "Ella can go fast."
Ella has worked to become a horsewoman.
She's had to learn to think through a run rather than just react to one. To understand why something happened. To make a correction. To feel what her horse is doing underneath her. To recognize when she needs to change something instead of just trying to do the same thing faster.
Those are skills that take time.
They take mistakes.
They take frustrating rides and a willingness to get back on and work through them.
And then she took those skills all the way to Oklahoma.
Her first-round barrel time was 20.454.
In round two?
15.956.
That's a 4.498-second improvement on a National Finals stage.
In poles, she went from a 27.086 in round one to a 25.502 in round two on ole Gemma girl.
She also completed both rounds of Senior Trail with times of 33.872 and 35.773.
But that first barrel run followed by that second barrel run is probably one of our favorite pieces of Ella's Nationals story.
She could have let the first one get in her head.
She didn't.
She came back.
She adjusted.
And she rode.
That is the kind of growth we're looking for.
We're incredibly proud of the rider Ella has become, but we're even more excited about the horsewoman she's still becoming.
Loretta Widick: Seven Years Old and Earning Every Bit of It
Loretta was seven years old at Nationals.
Seven.
She qualified in both Little Wrangler Barrel Racing and Pole Bending.
And she had to earn her way there just like everybody else.
For a seven-year-old, that's a pretty big ask.
You're not just learning a pattern.
You're learning to actually ride.
Where do you look?
What are your hands doing?
What are your legs doing?
Are you still riding between the barrels?
What happens when your horse doesn't go exactly where you planned?
Can you fix something in the middle of a run without completely losing the rest of it?
And, possibly the hardest lesson for a little kid, can you listen when someone tells you what you need to fix and then go try again?
Loretta did.
Over and over.
Then she went to Oklahoma and showed just how much all of that work had added up.
Her first barrel run was a 23.386.
She came back in round two and ran a 22.078.
Then she did the same thing in poles.
First round: 39.100.
Second round: 35.505.
Two events.
Two faster second-round performances.
At seven years old.
At the National Finals.
There is a lot to be proud of in those numbers.
But we're even prouder of what had to happen before the numbers ever showed up.
She had to learn.
She had to practice.
She had to struggle a little.
And she had to keep trying.
We'll brag about that one all day.
Bonnie Widick: One Run Doesn't Decide the Next One
Bonnie was also seven years old when she earned qualifications in both Little Wrangler Barrels and Pole Bending.
And Bonnie's Nationals week gave us one of the best lessons rodeo can teach.
Her first barrel run resulted in a no time.
Her stirrup busted.
We have the professional photo to prove it.
That's hard at any rodeo.
It's especially hard when you're seven years old, hundreds of miles from home, standing at the National Finals after working all season just to get there.
You can't redo it.
And rodeo doesn't care how badly you wanted it to go differently.
You get to decide what you do next.
Bonnie came back for round two.
And put a 21.190 on the clock.
THAT is the part we're proud of.
She didn't let the first run become her whole Nationals story.
She got back on her horse.
She went back through the gate.
And she rode again.
In poles, Bonnie ran a 29.075 in the first round and a 32.803 in the second.
She left Oklahoma with something far more valuable than a perfect results sheet.
She learned that a bad run doesn't get to decide the next one.
There are adults who still struggle with that lesson.
Bonnie learned it at seven.
We'll take that win.
They Didn't Get There Alone
One of our favorite parts of Nationals was watching our Dale Rosa girls get to experience it alongside an incredible group of Indiana Junior Rodeo Association friends and teammates from other Associations such as Wildfire Little Britches, Central Indiana Little Britches, Midwest Youth Rodeo Association, and Illinois Little Britches.
Nonetheless, Indiana brought a crew!
In the Little Wrangler division were:
Loretta Widick
Bonnie Widick
Will Niver
Ridge Schaub
Chloe Ehrnthaller
The Junior Girls included:
Reese Goble
Jasper Holtz
Jazzy Barnes
With Luke Niver representing the Junior Boys.
And the Senior Girls included:
Ella Gerdes
Cassie Jo Metz
Jocelyn Firebaugh
Twelve Indiana Junior rodeo kids...plus some!
Twelve kids who had spent the season seeing each other at rodeos, cheering for each other, competing alongside each other and working toward the same enormous goal.
Then suddenly there they were.
Oklahoma City.
National Finals.
Together.
Every one of them took a different road to get there.
Different horses.
Different events.
Different struggles.
Different goals.
But every one of them had done the work required to earn a spot on that National Finals draw.
That's pretty special.
Rodeo can look like an individual sport when one horse and one rider enter the arena.
Anyone who lives it knows better.
It's families hauling trailers hundreds of miles down the highway.
It's somebody holding your horse while you run to check a draw.
It's kids warming up together.
Parents helping parents.
Teammates screaming from the fence when one of their own comes through the gate.
It's celebrating the great runs and finding your people after the hard ones.
These kids compete against each other throughout the year.
But when Indiana went to Oklahoma?
They were a team.
And watching that group represent our area on a national stage was something we won't forget.
And Then There Was Oklahoma
Of course, Oklahoma wasn't going to let everyone come all that way without making things interesting.
It was hot.
The days were long.
The OKC Fairgrounds were huge.
There were horses to feed, water, warm up, cool down and keep comfortable.
There were draws to check, tack to keep organized, kids to get where they needed to be and approximately seventeen million things happening at the same time.
Then came the storms.
Because apparently competing at the National Finals wasn't enough excitement for one week.
Severe weather moved through central Oklahoma as Finals week wrapped up around the Fourth of July, bringing heavy rain and damaging winds to the area.
Through the heat, the storms, the long days, the unfamiliar surroundings, the nerves, the mistakes, the good runs and the hard ones, these kids kept showing up.
Honestly?
That's probably the best way to describe their entire season.
They kept showing up.
The Results Sheet Only Tells Part of the Story
We love a fast time.
Of course we do.
We rodeo.
But Dale Rosa has never been about teaching kids to hang on and go faster.
We want to build horsemen and horsewomen.
Our students learn the why.
Why did your horse move that way?
Why did that approach work?
Why didn't this one?
What did your hands do to the turn?
Where was your body?
Where were your eyes?
What did you feel underneath you?
Why do we warm a horse up a certain way?
Why does the horse come before the clock?
And what can you change next time?
We want our students to eventually become independent enough that we don't have to tell them every step.
We want them to know.
We want riders who can walk into an arena hundreds of miles away from home, feel what's happening underneath them, think, make an adjustment and ride their horse.
That's why Oklahoma means so much more to us than a set of times.
The clock tells us how fast they went.
The qualification tells us they earned the right to be there.
But we know what happened before Oklahoma.
We saw the practices nobody applauded.
We saw the frustration.
We saw the mistakes.
We saw the work.
We watched them figure things out.
We watched them get better.
We watched them come back after the weekends that didn't go the way they'd hoped.
And then we got to watch three Dale Rosa Equine students ride through the gate at the National Little Britches Finals.
Ella.
Loretta.
Bonnie.
They did that.
And we are so incredibly proud of them.
Now We Know the Road to Oklahoma
Maybe this is the part that excites us the most.
Before this season, Nationals could feel like one of those really big goals.
Something far away.
Something other people do.
Not anymore.
Ella, Loretta and Bonnie showed the rest of our Dale Rosa students that kids from our barn can get there.
They proved it.
Is it easy?
Absolutely not.
It takes work.
A lot of it.
It takes practice when you'd rather just ride.
It takes listening when your instructor tells you something you don't necessarily want to hear.
It takes taking care of your horse.
It takes families willing to haul.
It takes good horses, good teammates, good coaches, miles on the road and plenty of humbling moments.
It takes losing.
It takes learning.
It takes getting back on.
It takes showing up again.
But now our students know something important:
It's possible.
And after watching Ella, Loretta and Bonnie walk into those arenas in Oklahoma, we've got a few more Dale Rosa kids we'd really like to introduce to the OKC Fairgrounds next summer.
We can't wait to see who decides they're willing to work for it.
Oklahoma 2027?
Dale Rosa is coming.
Time to get to work.
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