Tuesday, February 11, 2025
33.8 F
Pawhuska
HomeCommunitySportsBarnsdall's Bronc Star: Jackson Howell spurs his way to success

Barnsdall’s Bronc Star: Jackson Howell spurs his way to success

From small-town roots to national rodeos, Jackson Howell embraces the thrill of saddle bronc riding with grit, growth, and a community behind him.

Cowboys, ranching and rodeo have played a major role in Osage county for decades, and have even helped shape the culture found within the Osage Reservation.

Osage tribal member, Jackson Howell, has been involved with the rodeo business since he was 5, and both of his parents have spent most of their lives in rodeo.

“Both of my parents have rodeoed throughout their lives,” Howell said. “When I was growing up, we’d been involved with a rodeo or a play day association, and I just started out young and carried it throughout my life.”

Howell has competed in just about every event in the rodeo industry, but has focused on saddle bronc riding for the past couple of years.

“When I was 13 or 14, I was pretty big into calf roping and thought that was going to be my money shot,” he said. “I went and worked on a ranch that summer and started riding some colts and started riding bucking horses after that.”

He received a rodeo scholarship to attend Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant for saddle bronc riding. His senior year of high school, he started going to Durant to get acquainted with the coaches and other students on the rodeo team.

“The end of my junior year and senior year I started coming to practice with these college boys, and became pretty good buddies with the coach,” he said. “It wound up working out pretty good, they were like ‘We want you to come rodeo for us and we can give you a scholarship,’ and had a signing day at the school.”

After multiple college tours, he signed with SEOSU at the end of his senior year of high school.

“I came to Southeastern and it seemed like it was the right place,” he said. “Then I started coming to practice with them and it just went from there.”

Jackson Howell, pictured in his Southeastern Oklahoma State University rodeo team uniform on Aug. 22, 2024. He is a freshman at the university in Durant, Okla. Courtesy Photo

Assistant rodeo coach at SEOSU, Kyle Brauderick, said Jackson stuck out in recruitment for several reasons.

“He was really interested in our program,” Brauderick said. “He knew that we keep a lot of good practice horses and opportunities to get better. He has a lot of desire to win and get better, and that piqued my interest in him that he could help the program. We recruit a lot of people out of junior colleges, and he’s straight out of high school, so we don’t get a ton of [students] straight out of high school.”

The SEOSU men’s rodeo team has been successful over the years, which drew Howell into the school. The men’s team won the Cowboy Stampede Oklahoma State University rodeo that was held October 17-19.

Brauderick has noticed Howell’s progression from his senior year of high school through his freshman year of college.

“The competition gets tougher the higher level you go,” he said. “He’s having to change his riding style a little bit, and he’s not afraid to practice that and get better.”

Since he started riding bucking horses his junior year of high school, Howell has competed at several major rodeos in the country.

This past July, he competed in the National High School Rodeo Finals in Rock Springs Wyoming. He was one of four high schoolers in the state from his event that went and competed.

“I did not do that great at Nationals,” he said. “I got bucked off. I just wasn’t doing my stuff right.”

Howell’s motivation to keep going is the adrenaline rush from getting bucked off.

“It’s getting bucked off,” he said. “Its comparable to baseball or softball when you’re trying to hit and they just keep coming by you right down the middle, and they’re a perfect strike every time, but you just have to keep adjusting your swing and try to get it right. That’s how it is with bronc riding, you have to do what you did right again, and take what you did wrong and try to fix it before you go to the next one. Its constant critiquing. I always want to get better.”

In October 2023, he competed in the Indian Nationals Rodeo Finals after qualifying at their tour rodeo in Okmulgee.

“I went to their main tour rodeo, and if you win the tour rodeo, it’s an automatic qualifier to the Indian finals,” he said. “I didn’t win that rodeo, but I won enough money at that rodeo to qualify.”

Howell finished second in saddle bronc riding at the qualifier in Okmulgee, and was able to advance to the INRF.

“It was like somebody just handed me a one-foot tall stack of 100 bills,” he said.

He had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas and compete against some of the cowboys that he looks up to and have inspired him along the way.

“The competition was pretty tough,” he said, “There were quite a few guys going into the PRCA and the Indian rodeos. They had a bunch of guys there that I still look up to this day, and try to mimic some of the stuff they do to see if it’ll work for me because they’re as good as they are.”

While he didn’t place, he had a takeaway from the experience.

“Regardless of what happens, if you get bucked off, if you go out there and don’t have a good bronc ride, it’s going to be O.K.,” he said. “There’s more bucking horses and there’s more rodeos to go to.”

Jackson Howell signed his letter of intent to rodeo for Southeastern Oklahoma State University on March 7, 2024, at his high school in Barnsdall. Courtesy Photo

Howell has a big support system behind him that keeps him motivated to do better in the rodeo industry.

“My household family,” he said. “I’d go anywhere with them, and I know everything would be just fine. If I needed to go talk to the secretary or someone for 30 minutes, and I needed my bucking horse saddled, I can text my mom, my brother, they’d have me taken care of. That and the town of Barnsdall and Osage County, the amount of support I have is unmatched. I’ve got the greatest support group behind me. It means the world to me because I wouldn’t be able to do it if I didn’t have all those people behind me telling me to keep going and that I’m making them proud.”

His mother, Alexis Howell, made sure Jackson and his siblings could pursue a rodeo career, and also be safe.

“He has always been the kid that may not have the super expensive horse when he started,” she said. “I always made sure they had horses they could be competitive on, but they would also be safe on.”

Over time, he became more competitive, but always got up and improved.

“He’s always been very critical of himself,” she said. “He always works hard. One of the things I’ve told him is that hard work beats talent when talent won’t work hard, and he’s had an excellent work ethic.”

Jackson is also one of the few people in the area that competes in his event, which makes him a stand out in the rodeo world.

“The rough stock events aren’t super common in our part of the rodeo world,” Alexis said. “I’ve teased Jackson a lot and I’ve said ‘Hey, you’re just going to have to be tough and keep a positive mental attitude because you picked the one event where there are very few people in our area that know about it.’”

Howell has a positive outlook while competing in the rodeo industry. “It may hurt for a minute, but it’ll be O.K.,” he said. “There’s always another rodeo.”

Author

  • Collyn Combs

    Collyn Combs is a multimedia journalism student at Oklahoma State University. She is a member of the Osage Nation, and her family is from the Grayhorse district. Combs is from Ponca City, Okla., and attended school in Bartlesville, Okla., where she graduated in 2017. She served on the newspaper staff at Bartlesville High School from 2016-2017. She attended Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa after graduation and wrote for The Maverick newspaper from 2017-2020, and served as editor from 2018-2019. She currently lives in Stillwater, Okla., and is involved with O’Colly TV as the weather reporter, OSU Native American Student Association and is secretary for the Omega Phi Alpha National Service Sorority.

Get the Osage News by email!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Collyn Combs
Collyn Combshttps://osagenews.org
Collyn Combs is a multimedia journalism student at Oklahoma State University. She is a member of the Osage Nation, and her family is from the Grayhorse district. Combs is from Ponca City, Okla., and attended school in Bartlesville, Okla., where she graduated in 2017. She served on the newspaper staff at Bartlesville High School from 2016-2017. She attended Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa after graduation and wrote for The Maverick newspaper from 2017-2020, and served as editor from 2018-2019. She currently lives in Stillwater, Okla., and is involved with O’Colly TV as the weather reporter, OSU Native American Student Association and is secretary for the Omega Phi Alpha National Service Sorority.
RELATED ARTICLES

In Case You Missed it...

Upcoming Events