If they gave gold buckles for overcoming adversity and beating the odds, Hana Weston would have several in her collection.

From horse-related injuries to making tough decisions about which events to pursue and a nasty truck accident, Weston is still hooked on rodeo and knocking down her goals.

One of those goals met, although it was unexpected, is a trip to the 2025 Women’s Rodeo Championships (WRC), the $802,000 all-women’s rodeo event held May 12-14 & 17 in Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas.

The WRC is a joint venture of the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) and the World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA).

No limits on this cowgirl

Weston is one of the cowgirls taking advantage of the WRC’s newly added Limited Division, the next step in the WRC’s mission to level the playing field by offering competitive opportunities for all cowgirls regardless of how far along they are in their competitive journey.

The Limited Division offers its own Leaderboard for advancement to the WRC and a separate path of competition at the event. One cowgirl from the Limited Division will compete in the WRC’s Championship Round to be held at with the PBR World Finals at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on May 17, 2025.

Weston is currently ranked second on the Leaderboard ahead of the April 13th cutoff date.

“We didn’t even know about [her position on the Leaderboard],” Weston admitted with a laugh.

Weston in Texas

A sophomore at Ranger College, Weston loves having the chance to fuel her fire for roping thanks to the many opportunities in Texas.

“Roping pretty much takes up all of my time,” Weston noted. She’s finishing up an Associates of Science degree with an eye toward dental hygiene school in the future. “I’m all on-line for school so I can go all the time.”

That’s basically heaven for the cowgirl who grew up on a ranch in Lake Town, Utah. Her mom, Kelly, wasn’t raised around horses but played sports and dad, Wesley, was once a saddle bronc rider. Weston quickly found her way into 4-H along with junior rodeo.

“I always had something to do with rodeo. I was barrel racing but I wanted to do more,” Weston explained. “I just love roping; it’s a passion and I crave it.”

Hana Weston is overcoming the odds

The first major speed bump in Weston’s rodeo journey came during a Lynn Smith-Jackie Crawford goat tying and breakaway roping clinic when she was in sixth grade.

During a dismount, Weston was injured and kicked by the horse.

“Yeah, I never made the breakaway part of the clinic,” Weston noted dryly. Instead, she spent two weeks in the hospital with a grade 5 laceration to her liver and took four months to get back into the saddle.

“Then, I blew my knee out at one of the first ones back,” Weston said with a laugh. “I thought, ‘I need to be done with this.’”

Instead of wallowing in the misfortune, Weston looks at it as a crossroads in her rodeo evolution.

“It was a turning point for me,” she said. “I quit tying goats and then, when I was done with high school rodeo, I was done with poles. And I never really had the love for barrels so now I just rope.”

Weston won the Utah Junior High State title in the breakaway roping just two years after her accident and has been successful at Mike and Sherrylynn Johnson’s Vegas Tuffest ropings during her youth rodeo days as well. More recently, she won a round of the Oklahoma’s Richest qualifier for the Million Dollar Breakaway.

“We don’t have an arena,” Weston’s mom Kelly pointed out. “We’ve never had calves. She just roped the dummy and we pulled a sled for her but her practice on live cattle was at the jackpots.”

“We utilized the resources we had.”

Things haven’t exactly gone smooth since Weston headed south for college either. During her first season of college rodeo, she was t-boned, totaling her truck and trailer. That accident left her with a bad concussion.

“She’s always been my child with the bad luck,” Kelly said.

The oldest sister by six years to little brother Tibbs and sister Gracie Jo, Weston loves coaching them in their roping.

“Being able to help them out is super fun,” Weston said.

In fact, she and Tibbs pulled a recent horse switch that has proved successful for them both.

“I retired my old horse and took a young one down here to college,” she explained. “But the young horse was giving me problems.”

“My parents called me and said M&M will be in Wickenburg at midnight,” she said of her brother’s 12 year old gelding. “So I left the college rodeo in Sweetwater and drove all night.”

“M&M is very calm and collected and let’s me focus on what I’m doing,” Weston said. “He gives me the same run every time and is a freer style that I prefer. He doesn’t hardly ever get tight.”

Meanwhile, Tibbs has brought the old horse out of retirement and is doing well.

“So it worked out great,” Weston joked, making it clear she didn’t just steal her brother’s horse.

Weston is busy gearing up for the spring college rodeo season with a goal to get to the College National Finals.

“We have about 300 breakaway ropers in our region so it’s a tough one for sure,” she said.

She’s also working on that young horse so that she can have a couple of options when she buys her WPRA permit back again in the future.

And she’s ready to tackle the WRC again come May.

“I plan to stick around for it,” she said.