Joleigh Galloway got $2,000 and the 2023 WCRA Rodeo Carolina DY Showcase goat tying win as an early present for her 16th birthday. The Liberty, South Carolina, cowgirl was 7.78 to best the field and take home $2,000.

Lillian Kent: There are a lot of North and South Carolina girls here. Coming into this, explain to me the kind of opportunity that it is to get to get to tie at this place.

Joleigh Galloway: It’s a good way for me to get my name out there to colleges that are out in Texas, especially with me winning it. They post about it and then go to see it and then they start watching you. And I think one thing is when colleges are looking at, you can’t throw your stuff in the dirt and get mad about it. When you have a background, you have to figure out what you did wrong and how you can do better.

LK: Is this the first time you tied here?

JG: This is the first time I’ve ever been to a WCRA Showcase.

LK: coming into it, what was kind of your game plan? What were you thinking?

JG: My game plan was just to get a solid, smooth time put on the board to put me on the scoreboard for the WCRA. My horse said that we were going to do more than that. He got me down there where I needed to be and my goat was an amazing goat and helped me be a 7.78.

LK: Tell me about your horse.

JG: He is not actually my horse; a girl that lives near the house got him right before she went to college. And when she went to college, he was sitting, didn’t do anything. She was like, “Well, I’m tired of him sitting there.” And so, she was like, come get him, rodeo off of him. I was tying goats off of my barrel horse and then she got hurt at State Finals. So I was like, you know what? I’m going to try and tie goats off of him. And he will put me there every single time in the right position and not think twice about it. He’s 17 or 18.

LK: He’s a big guy.

JG: He is, but one thing that does help is when I do go to step off, he squats a little bit. It’s a little bit easier on my knees. I do not have the best knees. I also want to give a ginormous thank you to Stacey Martin with Next Level Goat Tying and Carly Green with Carly Green Performance Enhancement. I have been working out with Carly Green for three years now and I went from tying 21s to 7s in the matter of three years.

LK: How long did it take you to get him tuned into the whole goat tying thing?

JG: Well, I kind of got tired of tying off my old horse when my barrel horse got hurt. So I just randomly, one rodeo, said let’s just try it and see what happens.

LK: So you hadn’t even stepped off him that much?

JG: No, I had never stepped off of him before, and then I was just like, you know what, I’m just going to try it at this one rodeo. It was just a rodeo at the house and I was like, I’m just going to try it and see what happens. And I have been goat tying off of him for the last three months now.

LK: Are there any colleges you’re looking at right now?

JG: I tie goats with Stacey Martin with Next Level Goat Tying, and she’s the goat tying coach at Panola College. I have been looking at Panola and the University of Wyoming because I have a lot of friends out in Wyoming that we know, and I think it’d be really cool to be able to go out to college.