When Sam Hamilton discovered she could blend her love of horses and of shooting, she didn’t think life could get much better. As an avid hunter and horsewoman, she was delighted to find a way to blend her passions and quickly became heavily involved with mounted shooting events.
Mounted shooting continues to be a strong passion of hers, but is a piece of her larger journey. She started with barrel racing and has recently begun pursuing breakaway roping. It is the breakaway roping that has led to the most growth, frustration, and desire to encourage others to never give up.
Although Sam and her family currently live in Colorado, she grew up in Missouri. Her
childhood was more than difficult, and she moved out of the house at 17. During this time she was working at a local vet clinic and became good friends with a girl (Billie Columbo) who also worked there and was a barrel racer. This friend introduced Sam to horses, taught her to ride and run barrels, and sparked in Sam a lifelong love for horses and western events.
When she moved to Colorado, one of the first things she did was buy a property and put a horse on it, a decision that has proved to provide countless benefits as she finds refuge in the peace of the pastures after long days at her corporate job. Sam believes there is no way to be closer to God than in the saddle.
Her mounted shooting career has taken her all over, including qualifying for the World Series. In the past few years, she’s battled some arthritis in her hands that has complicated her shooting, and discovered a desire to be able to join her husband and daughter in their passion for roping. Her husband mainly team ropes, and her daughter team ropes, does steer stopping, mounted shooting, runs barrels and runs poles.
At 44, Sam decided it was time to learn to breakaway rope. She was used to applying her sharp mind and horse talent to new events and discovering they came easily, but breakaway roping has been the opposite—as though nothing would click.
Her husband is a great roper but they found she could benefit from outside clinics rather than his trying to diagnose what was wrong in her swing. He could see it was wrong, but Sam needed a teacher that wasn’t her spouse to help provide solutions to the issue. She credits clinics and instruction from Linsay Rosser-Sumpter and Clint and Gracie Lay with being instrumental to her development.
In fact, it was Linsay who helped her find her special horse Frankie that she currently
competes on. Sam and her husband flew to Nevada to try her. While Frankie has been difficult for others in the past, she and Sam are thick as thieves, and all Sam has to do is look at her for her to walk over to her.
Sam wondered if she could shoot off Frankie, knowing it had never been done before, and took her to a shoot to give it a try. It went well–they won their class their first time out. Since then, Frankie does it all and has been team roped off of and run barrels. More importantly, she has been the best instructor for Sam in roping.
While she adores Frankie, Sam has continued to struggle with the breakaway. Learning stuff has always come easy for her, but no matter what she did she just couldn’t get things to come together in the roping pen. She kept placing last and would get discouraged, feeling like she just couldn’t do it.
A week before the Douglas County Hometown Rodeo she and her family were entered in, she was at a local beginner roping and roped better than she ever had before, not missing any calves. But then the next night she roped somewhere else and couldn’t catch any of them.
The rodeo she was practicing for was the following evening and she kept thinking she just didn’t want to look like an idiot. The journey felt like an emotional rollercoaster and it was appealing to just scratch her name and sit back with a beer and watch others go at it. She’d just not rope and not have to worry. Despite her doubts, her husband kept trying to tell her to stick with it, and that he thought she was roping better than she ever had before.
Sam finally decided to stay entered, even though she almost chickened out when she saw the other names registered for the breakaway.
She and her horse gave it their best shot and won first place, which merited a beautiful buckle.
By the time the rodeo was over, it was dark and late at night, and she just sat at her trailer with her horse and cried. She could finally see some of her perseverance paying off.
Now Sam wants other people to know not to give up whatever they are pursuing. She says, “You don’t have to be Jackie Crawford, you’re your only competition. We live in a world where all you see on social media are the winners. This can really get in your head when all you’re doing is losing. and the world isn’t against you. Everyone is on their own journey and you’re the only one you need to worry about in the arena.”
Be like Sam. Stick with it!
Photo credit to Chris Gortzig and Quigley Photography.
