Veteran barrel racer seemingly born to ride

Maralee Dinsdale, 50, can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to ride.

Dinsdale, a librarian at Smith-Cotton High School, has been a competitive barrel racer since she was 8.

When Dinsdale was about 4 years old, “there was a gal in my hometown that was pretty successful, and she would cool her horse out, and I don’t know if I used to wait all day for her to come by, but I would ask, ‘Could I ride with you?’ ” she said.

Dinsdale’s family moved out to the country, and she got her own horse.

“When I was 5, I was going out to a pasture of 20 acres and catching my own horse,” she said. “I figured out how to get a bridle on it and I rode bareback from the time I was 5 to the time I was 8.”

That passion for riding continues today.

“When I get home from school, I ride,” she said.

She got into barrel racing after a trip to Sidney, Iowa, home of the world’s largest continuous outdoor rodeo.

“The girls did the barrel racing and I just thought that was awesome,” she said.

She still competes. Two of her horses, quarter horse Ought to Strike, known as Oreo, and paint horse Sure as Smooth Song, known as Singer, are her main barrel racing horses. Last year, she was reserve champion in the 16-county district.

Dinsdale took two months off this year, but usually competes year-round. She races just about every weekend, she said.

There’s more to barrel racing than circling the three barrels. Dinsdale said the sport is really about precision riding.

“It’s high-level training and you have to have some guts and you have to have a killer instinct,” she said.

Dinsdale also trains horses.

“That’s what I enjoy the most, especially as I get older, because it gets harder to compete,” she said.

Her love of teaching stems from her love of the sport. She started giving lessons in her teens.

In high school, Dinsdale was Missouri High School Rodeo Queen and was all-around cowgirl her senior year. In college, she had her first 4-H horse club.

Her daughter, Randi Milne, was also a competitive barrel racer and got a college rodeo scholarship.

“Horses do so many great things for kids,” Dinsdale said.

She still teaches barrel racing. She currently has two students, but has had as many as eight.

“I like to think I get them going and when they don’t need me, they don’t come,” she said.

Brooke Angel Wright, 13, met Dinsdale at Wright’s first barrel race. Her best time then was 30 seconds. Lessons with Dinsdale improved her time dramatically.

“I went home and I practiced the whole week, and we just kept doing that for a couple months, actually. Then the next time I went to compete was about four months later, and I ended up second, and I ran a 16.5,” she said. “We were really excited, so we kept going back and I just kept improving and improving. Right now, my fastest time is 14.4, and I have the arena record for” two arenas.

Dinsdale’s outdoor arena, at her home south of Sedalia, is known as “One More Time Arena” after her favorite saying — one that Wright hears a lot.

“She says, ‘One more time,’ ” Wright said. “Always, it’s ‘one more time.’ ”

Wright, of Wheatland, said she loves working with Dinsdale, who is always there to watch her compete.

“I like how she pushes you positively and she kind of makes you want to do better,” Wright said. “It’s funny, because we get to competing, and she beats me and then I beat her. She’s there to tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it the next time.”

The two often ride against each other, she said, but Wright doesn’t always win.

Wright is learning more than how to ride from Dinsdale.

“She’s very horse smart. She knows everything — if your horse doesn’t like the bit, or why it’s not eating, if it’s time to worm them,” she said.

For Dinsdale, riding is still her passion.

“When I’m out there, I don’t think about stuff. I don’t think about school, I don’t think about problems,” she said. “It’s my major stress reliever.”