ProRodeo Sports News - February 9, 2018

TIME CAPSULE

PRCA ProRodeo file photos

A round the time Fox Hastings ran away from home, somewhere between the age of 12 and 14, ProRo- deo Hall of Famer Bill Pickett was inventing the sport of steer wrestling. By 1924, the 26-year-old, California cowgirl became the first female bulldogger. Born Eloise Fox, in Galt, Calif., to Wesley Galveston Fox and Susie Agusta (Sawyer) Fox in 1898, Hastings ran away to begin her career riding bucking horses and trick riding with the Irwin Brother’s Wild West Show. By 1912, she was riding one of the fastest running trick riding horses at that time. At age 16, the cowgirl married rodeo cowboy Mike Hastings. Two years later, she placed third at the 1916 New York Stampede’s cowgirls bronc riding. Hastings kicked off her bulldogging at the 1924 Houston (Texas) Stock Show and was quoted as saying, “If I can just get my fanny out of the saddle and my feet planted, there’s not a steer that can last against me.” The “red-headed feminine daredevil of the arena” (as Foghorn Clancy described her) wasn’t bragging. The cowgirl proved her grit with a record-setting, 17-second run in 1924. Clancy, a rodeo announcer and publicity man, noted her as being, “a charismatic performer who could smile at the camera while lying in the mud, still clinging to the neck of a freshly thrown steer.” The same year she kicked off her bulldogging career, the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) presented her with a Thoroughbred horse as a token of appreciation for getting to ride an American cowboy horse. Trailblazer Fox Hastings was first female bulldogger

To paint a picture of Hasting’s tenacity in the arena, Clancy recalled an instance at the 1916 Joe Bartles Roundup in Kansas City, where a horse fell on her during the cowgirl bronc riding competition. Clancy was certain she had broken her neck, but he lied to the crowd and assured them she was going to be fine. “Her limp form was rushed to the hospital,” he wrote in an October 1948 edition of Hoofs and Horns . Then, to Clancy’s surprise, “an open car sped into the arena, and there, sitting upon the top of the back seat was Fox Hastings waving to the crowd.” The 20-year-old cowgirl demanded a re-ride and won the competition. After receiving an ovation from the crowd, “she managed to get where the

same audience could not see her before she collapsed.” Hastings remarried in the 1940s to Chuck Wilson, shortly before both of their deaths. Now, 70 years after her death in 1948, she is remembered as one of the pioneers of professional rodeo.

ProRodeo Sports News 2/9/18

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