By Rich Winter

605 Sports

BUFFALO — As a member of the state qualifying Harding County girls basketball team, rodeo has always been something Buffalo freshman Sattyn Wilson just kind of does in the summer.

Rodeo might be moving up on the list soon as Wilson won the first and second go-round at the South Dakota High School Finals Rodeo. Wilson qualified for her first-ever national finals with 81 points and a second-place finish. 

“My thoughts were to hopefully place in the top-10,” Wilson said. “I surely wasn’t thinking we were going to win the first two rounds.”

Wilson entered the state finals with 28 points. She won the first go-round with a time of 17.78 seconds and the second go-round with a time of 17.568 seconds. The 30 points she garnered from those first two performances all but guaranteed that Wilson would qualify for the National High School Finals Rodeo on July 14-20 in Wyoming. 

Wilson did not participate in junior high rodeo because of a conflict with the basketball season. Her horse (Rockin T Gypsey Rose or Rosa) was trained by her relatives Mike and Anita Heathershaw. 

Rosa was broken by Wilson’s father, Rollie, who was a seven-time Indian National Finals Rodeo champion. Sattyn Wilson’s sister, Saylor Wilson, did a lot of Rosa’s training and handed a well-rounded horse to her younger sister this year.

“I just felt like Rosa and I clicked right away,” Sattyn Wilson said. “My sister is more of a perfectionist and I just let her run and I really trust this horse.”

After taking the overall lead following the first two go-rounds, Wilson finally started believing she could have a shot at the national finals.

“It was pretty awesome,” she said. “It was her first big rodeo and she was doing awesome. I trusted her going into the short go-round and my overall thoughts were that I just wanted to have fun.”

Wilson’s time in the short-go was 17.789, good enough for fourth place in the performance and a trip to the national finals. 

“I was still trying to have fun and knew I just had to make a clean run,” she said. “Rosa got pretty deep in a hole on one barrel and slipped just a bit.” 

Wilson attributes part of her success coming from a very competitive Northwest Region with riders like Arina Haugen of Sturgis and Minda Woodward of Dupree pushing her.

“Our region is tough and you have to perform your best, and even if you do, there is no guarantee of winning,” she said. 

Wilson, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has a jam-packed summer with volleyball and basketball camps and open gym just about every night. 

With the National High School Finals Rodeo approaching in mid-July, Wilson expects to have the same carefree vibe she had at the South Dakota finals.

“I’m pretty excited and really proud of my horse and my sister,” she said. “I just want to go out there and have fun.”