AND THAT AIN'T NO BULL
Continued

Although Kelly tends to make bull riding look easy, she admits that she has had some scary experiences. “You’re actually the safest when you’re on the bull’s back. You rarely get hurt up there.”

       One time, while practicing with one of her bulls, Kelly got bucked off, and the 2,000-pound bull stepped on her leg. “How much you get hurt depends on where they step,” she said. “When he stepped on my leg, I had to have it reconstructed.”

       In July 2002, she competed in a small rodeo in Wyoming and hurt her back. She thought she also broke her pelvis, but really she had just been whipped around too much. “That two-day drive home was mis-er-y,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything for awhile and thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’”

       But soon after, she was eager to get back in the saddle again. “I don’t think that you can even begin to ride bulls unless you have a high tolerance for pain,” she added.

       Many animal rights activists give her a hard time when they find out what she does, but she said they have no idea what those bulls can take. “We put the rope around their flank area [near the lower belly], and it irritates them just enough to make them buck,” she said. “These bulls are so tough, and this bugs them; it doesn’t hurt them.”

       What bull riders do to the bulls couldn’t even compare with what bulls do to each other. “They hurt other bulls and run into each other with their horns,” she said. “We’ve had bulls kill each other right here. They’re just mean!”

       Kelly said bulls are definitely hard to fall in love with. She described one bull that was smaller than all the others but was also one of the meanest. “V8 was like a little tank. He used to fight bulls twice his size and butt heads with them so much that his head would swell up and his eyes would be nothing but little slits.”

       Riding a bull isn’t much of a regular workout. And when it comes to staying in shape, Kelly said she doesn’t really have a specific fitness regimen. “I ride barrels, which strengthens the inside of my legs, and I build fences and do other odd jobs around the ranch.”

       Those who know her best said they admire what a die-hard she is. Frank Kelly said she never ceases to impress him. “She amazes me every day,” he said. “There ain’t nothing that girl can’t do. I’d like to be the hero sometime.”

       He described one time when he went with her to watch her perform in a rodeo, and no one there could get the bull to cooperate. “None of the big men could even get him going. No one could start this bull, but guess who rode him? She didn’t let that bull bother her; she just rode the hell out of him.”

       Capt. Dave Niehuis, a firefighter from Sun Lakes who trains at the Kelly’s bull riding school, has known her for years and said he has always been impressed with her modesty. “She doesn’t blow her own horn. She’s a gutsy gal; she’s really something.”

       Niehuis said the Kelly family gave up the hope of a wealthy life-style in order to afford the ranch they run because it’s costly to own bulls and horses. “They don’t have a life of splendor or lavish furnishings,” he added. “They have the essentials and only the essentials.”

       Frank Kelly, who also works in construction, added, “When we got this place started, we did it on guts.”

       The most she made in a year from riding was a little less than $10,000, but Kelly said she wouldn’t change the way they live for anything. “I’m happy that we have this way of life for our kids. At this point, even if I decided I wanted to live a different way, I wouldn’t do it.”

       Although Kelly knows she has found her passion, she won’t do it much longer. “It’s not something you can do for your whole life,” she said. “But it has fulfilled me in a way that when I move on, I can say that I did something I really loved, and I was good at it.”

       She plans to quit riding bulls within the next few years but will always stay involved in rodeo in some capacity. “I’m still capable, but it takes away from devoting time to my kids and training their horses for rodeo,” she added.

       But the Kelly legacy is nowhere close to dying out. “My 11-year-old daughter, Frankie, tells all her friends that she’s going to be a ‘world-champion bull rider,’” she said, laughing. “She’s pretty handy. I think she’ll do it.”