Josie Conner might be leading the pack of breakaway ropers into the WCRA’s $360,000 Cowtown Christmas “major” in Fort Worth on Dec. 15-18, but she’ll have her hands full with the same teenager who’s battled her for years at Texas high school rodeos.
MaryBeth Beam, 17, roars into Cowtown ranked third on the Fort Worth roster, which also includes every superstar packing breakaway string right now… with names like Hampton, Crawford and Guy.
But nobody has more momentum this fall than Beam. At Mike White’s Pasture Roping in October, the teenager put on a clinic. She entered the breakaway twice and won two go-rounds en route to placing first and third in the average for a cool $5,000. She got a congratulatory message from defending NFBR champion Martha Angelone, who is also scheduled to compete in Fort Worth.
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Hailing from nearby Poetry, Texas—just a dot on the map east of Mesquite—Beam got a bunch of her points by nominating the weekly rodeos right there in “Northside.” So it feels like home to her. The home-schooled junior in high school has no lack of horsepower, either.
Her best horse is 16-year-old Spike, on whom NFR header Tyler Wade once roped. Then there’s her barrel horse, on whom she won the Mike White roping in the pasture. He’s her faster long-score horse that was a former cutter, of all things. Add to that her pole-bending horse, on which she roped calves at last week’s Ultimate Cowgirl Competition in Ponder (plus steer stopping, goat tying, barrel racing and pole bending) en route to him winning Reserve Champion Horse overall. You could say she’s mounted.
And nobody’s prouder than her grandpa, Louis Cernoch, on whose ranch she and her mom live and “cowgirl.” Beam is so driven that she entered last month’s Women’s Rodeo World Championships a good 800 points ahead of all other breakaway Challengers. She grabbed a sixth-place finish in Vegas despite breaking out, and now, bumped to a Pro, she’s one of the leaders heading into May’s 2021 version of the WRWC.
Plus, Beam has already secured an entry into the American Semi-Finals. In fact, that rodeo three years ago was the first time she’d nodded her head in the raucous and claustrophobic confines of the Cowtown Coliseum. And of course she’s currently winning the breakaway point standings in her high-school rodeo region, and eyeballing appearances at State in goat tying, pole bending and team roping, too.
One thing is clear—the world champs will have their hands full in Northside in a couple of weeks. The top two from each performance Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights advance to the Showdown Round on Saturday night—into which Conner gets a bye, no matter how she performs in the long rounds.
She’ll be looking over her shoulder not only at all the gold-buckle holders, but at Beam and, heck, also watching for young Rylie Edens, who won the breakaway for 9- to 12-year-olds this year at San Antonio. And Conner better not count out former collegiate champ Taylor Munsell or current WPRA world No. 1 Shelby Boisjoli. What a showdown coming up in Cowtown!
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