As a reader of The Breakaway Roping Journal and The Team Roping Journal, you are no doubt familiar with the name and works of Julie Mankin—longtime contributing editor to our roping and cowboy brands. But as the writer of others’ stories, hers is often left untold.
Mankin grew up in the company of her two sisters on a ranch in Gillette, Wyoming, and the girls grew up to be powerhouse high school and college rodeo contestants throughout the 90s.
“My older sister, Mandy, was the 1991 national high school breakaway champion and I was the 1994 runner-up national barrel racing champion,” said Mankin, who’d been horseback since she was 3.
The Mankins then saw success in the arena rodeoing for the University of Wyoming and taking the team to the College National Finals Rodeo multiple times, where they accomplished major feats and suffered sickening losses both, including Mankin having to pull out of the breakaway due to a branding-pen broken hand—though she still managed to run a cloverleaf two-handed and casted that year.
Post-college, Mankin continued to breakaway while—as the era dictated—maintaining an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. career. It didn’t stop her from winning the average at the Colorado Professional Rodeo Association Finals but, due to the gaping lack of opportunity in roping for women, it was clear the path forward needed to be aligned with her career, which she began as PR Coordinator for the PRCA, where she helped develop their first-ever public relations department.
Her career continued in the writing of award-winning pieces and editing for newspapers and magazines; running PR and communications teams at events like Cheyenne Frontier Days, the NFR and The American; contributing articles to publications like Spin to Win, Western Horseman, and American Cowboy; as well as helping orchestrate production for Yost Events, until a 2015 Texas highway wreck.
“I slid my F-250 under a barely-moving tractor-trailer at 80 miles an hour,” Mankin said. “The truck was in the passing lane of an interstate in the dark with no brake lights.”
The crash broke every bone in Mankin’s face and more in her neck, plus caused severe trauma to her face, and it took hours to extract her from her crushed vehicle. Remarkably alive at the accident, she was predicted to be dead upon arrival of her life flight to the hospital. But she wasn’t.
“I was in a coma for almost a month and then spent about six months learning to walk and talk. I moved to Nashville to work for RFD-TV, despite doctors advising me that I would not be able to.”
Shortly after, Mankin understood how correct the doctors had been and then, tragically, she was the victim of a second car wreck and hit at 60 miles per hour.
“That was kind of the ballgame for me,” Mankin said. “My heart didn’t know how to beat. My blood didn’t have the right oxygen or glucose. My respiration wasn’t regulated. Everything was mayhem.”
Mankin suffered and continues to suffer numerous maladies—including, but not limited to, brain injury, PTSD and cancer—and the battle to understand, treat, and then, how to pay for them, has been immense. A generous GoFundMe account kept food on her table in the first year, but her talent and passion for the Western and rodeo community’s history have remained her ace in the hole and a reason her contributions to our publications are invaluable.“
There’s were always girls who roped good,” Mankin affirmed. “And I’ll tell you, if that WPRA hadn’t kept going and providing world championships to these women… The WPRA has just been quietly doing their thing for almost 75 years and I just hope young barrel racers and ropers understand why they have a WPRA card. It’s important that they know that heritage and how they’ve gotten here.
“As women ropers, it was pro-level competition that we could go to and, not only that, but the camaraderie of an all-female rodeo—produced, put on by, organized by and competed in by just all women—was incomparable.”
Equally incomparable is the grit and determination that Mankin demonstrates through her daily pursuit of health and an award-winning career. Her recognition by the WPRA for her contributions to womens rodeo couldn’t be more deserved.
Congratulations, Julie. BRJ
