WELCOME TO OKEECHOBEE, FLORIDA
WHERE RODEO IS A TEAM SPORT, SMALL TOWN’S AMAZING COWBOYS AND COWGIRLS
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Written by: Kathy Ann Gregg
here is a Central Florida town that has been producing rodeo winners over the past three decades.
Maybe it’s the fresh air in Okeechobee, the heart of Florida's cattle country and where its high school is the state’s only school recognizing rodeo as an approved team sport. It has in the last year produced two national rodeo champions, the country’s only public school to achieve such notoriety. While Okeechobee High School didn’t have a rodeo team back into the 1980s, the school did produce other national champions such as Rabe Rabon and D.R. Daniel III. Both cowboys competed in tie-down roping—also called calf roping—and steer wrestling. They tied for the Florida High
Okeechobee's D.R. Daniel III at the Silver Spurs Rodeo in 1995 in the tie-down roping event. He was a national champion in the sport.
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School Rodeo calf-roping title in 1981, and Rabon went on to win that title for the next three years (1982-1984), as well as steer-wrestling titles in 1983 and 1984. While both men did well in bulldogging, roping made them cowboy celebrities. In 1986, for example, both qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, rodeo’s Super Bowl/ World Series. To do so, a cowboy must finish in the top 15 of all Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association calf-ropers, which is no small feat. And Daniel that year went on to become the National Finals Rodeo tie-down roping champion. That was despite his beloved grandfather’s death and returning to Florida for funeral services in the middle of the finals. He then took the title of tie-down roping champion at the Dodge National Circuit Finals Rodeo for the next two years, 1987 and 1988. At
COURTESY OF D.R. DANIEL III/PHOTO BY MIKE RASTELLI
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