Page 64 - 2021 Barrel Stallion Register

By DianEe Rice jAuGstISa
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Oklahoma Barrel Racer Dona Kay Rule Topped the Age Ranks and Placed 10th Overall at Her First National Finals Rodeo as a Competitor
Thenexttimeyouwanttopursueapassion,but you second-guess yourself by thinking, “I’m too (old, young, short, tall, serious, free-spirited, uneducated — you fill in the blank) to do that,” take a lesson from Dona Kay Rule. Last December, at age 61, Dona Kay took 10th place in the NFR, barrel racing her first time there as a competitor.
“I won about $95,000. I won two rounds and placed in five of 10, which was amazing!” says the lifelong trainer, cattle rancher and business owner from Minco, Oklahoma. “I thought it’d be really cool to place in a round or two; I didn’t have any idea it would go that well.
“I’d never competed at the NFR before,” she adds. “We had two children to raise and a business to run. I just rode colts and sold them, and paid for my children’s education.”
But the interest, the determination and the talent were there.
“I’ve always been encouraged to go because I’ve always been capable,” she says. “I never doubted my ability, but I didn’t have the opportunity. When my kids were grown and gone, I was watching the Oklahoma Thunder basketball team one day and they were interviewing Russell Westbrook. The interviewer asked him why he thought he could make all those amazing shots and he looked right through the camera at me and said, ‘Why not?!’
“I was looking at him because I always admired his tenacity and I thought, I don’t really know why not! I’m going to try it for myself! So, I did. I guess that’s the Annie Oakley in me. I wanted to and so I did.”
HER RODEO INTRO
The daughter of Don and Phyllis Frederickson, Dona Kay and her brother, Chris Banford, grew up in the rodeo world. Although Don worked construction by day, on weekends he’d hit the road with Dona Kay in tow. “My dad was a rodeo guy,” she says. “He rode broncs and bulls as a young man, then was an avid team roper as an adult. We did horse shows and team ropings my whole life. It was just a normal day; we rode horses all the time.”
As a youth, Dona Kay participated in hunter-jumpers and the typical AQHA western classes. One day that all changed.
“I’d won some ribbons at the horse show and we were all proud and hopped in the truck headed for my dad’s team roping,” she says. “He ended up winning. On the way home, I was looking at my pretty ribbons and he was counting his money. I decided I’d much rather have money than ribbons.”
She’d dabbled in barrel racing all along, but between ages 12 and 14, she got serious about it. She also got serious about training.
LIFE AFTER MARRIAGE
In the late ’70s, Dona Kay was working
in Antlers, Oklahoma, for Billy Perrin, whose daughter Jackie Jo won the World Championship barrel title in 1977. “He asked me to come
down full time, so I went to National Saddlery
to get my saddle fixed and that’s where I met
myhusband,John,”shesays.“Heworkedthere. When my job ended in Antlers, I came back
to National Saddlery and John and I ended up buying it. We had it for 30 years.”
The couple lived in Oklahoma City early on, then moved about 40 miles southwest to Minco around 2006. “When we were dating in the ’70s and I was driving up from Antlers to see him, we’d come to Minco because he had a friend who had a ranch up here and we’d go fishing in their pond,” she says. “(Moving to Minco) was kind of a God thing; it just happened to us.”
Along with his custom leather work and saddle-making skills that included crafting World Championship saddles for ProRodeo, John also sculpts bronze monuments, several of which stand in the Oklahoma City area and one that will soon be unveiled in Grapevine, Texas.
They raised a son and a daughter: Marshall, who’s in charge of maintenance at an Oklahoma City hospital, and Kayla, aka KK, who follows in her mother’s footsteps training horses at the family ranch.
“My whole life, I’ve always had four or five horses in training,” she says. “I like to just buy a broke gelding that’s not already a barrel horse and build on that. And let’s face it — because of my age, that’s just easier on me at this point in my life.
“I find out who they are, see if they will fit me or if they’ll fit someone else better, and if that’s the case, I try to place them. I primarily love the
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