It started with a prayer while surrounded by family, and ended with a payout.

“We are the champions! Staci is the champion,” sang Hope Dukes, celebrating her niece Staci Russell, 39, of Belleville, about 30 miles southwest of Detroit. Staci and her 20-year-old horse, Reese’s Cup, finished in first place with a time of 16 seconds — one second faster than the previous day’s win, during the women’s barrel racing competition for the Midwest Invitational Rodeo in Belleville.

“You don’t even look at the time anymore,” joked a family member who had gathered with Russell and others at her horse trailer, as she cooled her horse down after the race.

This rodeo, held in Russell’s hometown, features some of the nation’s top African American cowboys and cowgirls. Staci most often travels to rodeos around the nation, and it’s one of the few times family gets to see her compete in person.

“I love that she likes doing all this stuff,” said her mother, Pam Russell, of Canton.

“But she’s happy I found this later in life,” joked Russell, about the cost associated with competing.

It’s not easy competing in rodeo as a Black woman, she says

The duo make kicking up dirt while winding in a clover-like pattern around three barrels placed in an arena look easy but the road hasn’t always been the same.

“I had to establish myself as a competitor,” said Russell, wearing a belt buckle she earned as the 2017 Cowgirls Barrel Racing Year End Champion for the Mid States Rodeo Association. Russell works as an instructional technology coach for Van Buren Public Schools.

In 2018, Reese’s Cup was injured, and that put him out for six months. While he healed, she wasn’t able to click with another horse, so she cut her losses, ending her shot at being the first Black female in the finals of the International Professional Rodeo Association in more than 15 years. “It was a tough pill to swallow,” she said.

She also recalls the difficulty of being a Black woman competing in rodeo.

“I literally had one crowd where, as I circled the arena, it just got quiet,” she said. “It was weird.”

When she first started in 2012, Russell recalled, one announcer was met by booing after asking how many Obama fans are in the crowd.

Later, “He announces me and says, ‘We’re going to go down to the city of Detroit where they just filed bankruptcy.’ That was my announcement. But now it’s definitely not like that anymore.”

‘That horse is my kid,” Russell says

She was in the top 25 for the International Professional Rodeo Association in 2018, and in the top 10 for the Mid States Rodeo Association for three years.

Now, Russell said, people say, “Oh, that’s Staci from Detroit. She has a really good horse.”

“That horse is my kid,” Russell said of Reese’s Cup. “God sent him to me for a reason, and I’ll probably have to go to grief counseling if something happened to him. He gives me 100%. He’s slowing down a bit, but he’s faster than some of the other horses.”

Using her talents to inspire others

Russell hopes to one day start a school in Detroit to inspire kids while exposing them to horses. Mostly, she said, they’ve only seen them on TV. “It’s more than just basketball and football that you can actually get scholarships from,” she said.

Her competitiveness has already inspired others.

“She was the only other Black woman I’ve ever seen compete,” said barrel racer Veronica Weston, 19, of Tecumseh, while waiting with Russell to collect their payouts from their race. Weston was introduced to Russell by her mother at a rodeo in Ohio. “I always tell my mom I want to be like Staci when I grow up. She’s a huge role model for me. Everybody I meet, they speak so highly of her, too.”

Despite having to look for sponsors to help with the costs of taking care of her horse, the trailer, and the gas to travel to compete in a field where breaking even is sometimes doing good, Russell lives to race.

“I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything,” Russell said.  “I’m a first-generation cowgirl.”