GUYMON, Okla. – For just the third time in its history, a Miss Guymon Pioneer Days Rodeo has earned the Miss Rodeo Oklahoma title.
Taylor Spears, a 20-year-old agriculture communications junior at Oklahoma State University, will begin her reign in January, just days before her 21st birthday. In all the hoopla, this is another chapter in the storybook life of a rodeo queen.
“My sister was a rodeo queen before me,” Spears said. “By default, I wanted to do everything my sister did. When she got older, she got involved in a lot of other things in school. I decided that while all those other things were fun, they weren’t for me. I just kept going on. I’ve been going to queen pageants since I was 7 or 8 years old.”
She’s been successful at it, too. She first served as Miss Rodeo Oklahoma Sweetheart, advanced to Miss Rodeo Oklahoma Teen and then became Miss Rodeo Oklahoma Princess.
She’s climbed the next rung up the ladder and will hold the highest title in the Sooner State through 2018; with that, she became the first person to have owned all four titles in Oklahoma. That December – which is still 15 months away – she will hope to continue living out her dream as Miss Rodeo America.
“It’s been a fun, growing dream,” Spears said. “It’s very surreal to me to be Miss Rodeo Oklahoma. I never imagined when I entered this summer that I would win. It’s very humbling, but it’s also very exciting for me at the same time.”
She is from Cleveland, Okla., a town of more than 3,000 on the Arkansas River just northeast of Tulsa. It’s 300 miles from her home to Guymon, which hosts the annual Pioneer Days Rodeo each May. That’s quite a drive to be part of a ProRodeo Hall of Fame event, but it was important for Spears.
“Guymon has been a pageant that’s been on my radar for years,” she said. “I went twice before, in 2010 as Teen and 2013 as Princess. The pageant coordinator, Becky Robinson, and Jada Breeden (executive director of the Guymon Chamber of Commerce) were very accommodating, and I got to meet Becky’s mom.
“I was part of the family, but more importantly, you knew their queen was going to be supported. That’s something I cherish most.”
It will come in quite handy as she spends her 2018 touring the state, primarily, and the country while sharing her love for the game she represents.
“I’ll be traveling outside of Oklahoma to some of the bigger rodeos in the PRCA,” said Spears, who joins Sherri Lynn Stewart and Stacey Schneeber as previous Miss Pioneer Days Rodeo winners who were selected as Miss Rodeo Oklahoma. “Being able to live the drams I’ve only imagined, I’m excited to experience everything and put my own personal twist on it.
“What I want to do when I’m done with the pageants changes depending on the day. Ultimately, I want to be a news reporter, starting with local news stations with the end goal being a national news reporter.”
Taylor Spears is off to a running start, and she’s excited about the next year – or two – of the experiences her life will bring her.