- Miss Rodeo Idaho 2023, Lydia Miller, is concluding her year as titleholder after crisscrossing the country, and visiting rodeos near and far.
- Miller is headed to the Miss Rodeo America Pageant, held Dec. 3 - 10 in Las Vegas, where she will compete in events like horsemanship, extemporaneous speaking, and rodeo knowledge.
- Lydia made many of her outfits for the Pageant, and has kept them under wraps. The outfits can be seen publicly for the first time at a special send-off party for Lydia begining at 3 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 18 at the Twin Falls County Fairgrounds.
What follows is a transcript of the broadcast script.
Lydia: "This is my first queening buckle ever..."
Rodeo runs deep in Lydia Miller’s family.
Lydia: "....It's kind of been an insane journey in a matter of 8 years"
For rodeo queens, the crown gets passed down … but the buckles you keep.
This case - a special place - for buckles won by the whole family.
"I have to say this is one of my favorite buckles because, as I kinda mentioned before, horsemanship is the biggest part of any pageant"
She attended rodeos as a kid with her grandparents... And watched her parents compete.
But once she realized how hands-on these rodeo queens are... She was hooked
Lydia: “I think that seeing the opportunities these girls had to work with stock contractors with these rodeos and do more than be a smiling pretty face, that was really inspiring to me."
Now -- Lydia is gearing up for the biggest event of her entire pageant career... The Miss Rodeo America pageant... Which starts December 3rd in Las Vegas,
Lydia: “So this is kind of the big one, this is what I’ve been training for."
There will be all kinds of competitions... And you better believe the rodeo queens will be dressing to impress.
Lydia is keeping details about her outfits under her hat until she makes them public for the first time at a send-off party at the Twin Falls County Fairgrounds on the 18th.
Lydia: “I've helped make myself, my mom has been a huge part of this, and we did a lot of this with tools and things from my great-grandmother who was very important in my life when I was younger."
A woman with many talents ...
Add to the list -- leather crafting.
She tooled these chaps special for Vegas with images important to Idaho and important to her
Lydia: “ So this is my mom barrel racing, and you could even see she used to take her foot out of the stirrup to miss the barrel so she wouldn’t knock it. Yeah, so she was a pretty cool rider, in my opinion.”
“My dad was a bareback rider, he loved riding bucking horses, that was this thing, so, of course, I had to include that on there with the Sawtooth Mountains and a western white pine as well.”
In under two minutes, she freehanded a horse into some leather while I watched.
Lydia: "Not everybody does leatherwork like this. A lot of times it's your fun floral patterns and things like that. I love doing things a little bit differently. And I loved drawing horses growing up, it's one of my favorite things to tool on leather.
90 seconds of chamfering later, voila!
