This 21-year-old is one of the top breakaway ropers in the world. She plans to defend her title

Hali Williams is one of the top breakaway ropers in the world. At the end of September, she ranked fifth in the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association’s Pro Rodeo Breakaway World Standings. The 21-year-old Texan has earned more than $130,000 this year.

Williams will be looking to defend her title at the Kimes Ranch Million $ Breakaway at WestWorld in Scottsdale. The event was originally scheduled for Thanksgiving week, but was postponed due to an outbreak of equine herpesvirus, known as EHV-1. The Kimes Ranch Million $ Breakaway is set to take place the week of Dec. 15. 

Breakaway roping is similar to tie-down roping — except in breakaway, after the rider catches the calf, they let it go, rather than tying it down. Williams is one of the best.

Williams joined The Show and shared that she got into this sport, in part, because of her parents — her dad is Pro Rodeo Hall of Famer Ken “Speed” Williams.

Full conversation

HALI WILLIAMS: So my mom actually breakawayed a little bit in her youth, but she was a professional polo player. And then my dad was a team roper and tie down roper, and all I did was grow up team roping. And so then when that happened, it was kind of crazy just because I was in sixth grade and my dad was like, “you probably need a breakaway for the all-round,” and I was kind of like lagging a little bit about it, but it worked out and I kind of fell in love with the sport.

MARK BRODIE: So you started doing this when you were in 6th grade. So you were like 12 or 13 years old. 

WILLIAMS: Yep, I was 12.

BRODIE: Wow. You must have been the youngest person doing this, I would imagine, by quite a bit. 

WILLIAMS: No, there's actually a lot of girls. There's a lot of girls that start at like 6 or 7, honestly.

BRODIE: Do you remember the first time you got on a horse? 

WILLIAMS: No, I was 2 weeks old when I sat on my first horse with my dad.

BRODIE: You were 2 weeks old. My goodness. Do you remember the first time you sat on a horse by yourself? 

WILLIAMS: No, I think I was 2 when they would let me sit on a horse at the time we had Dollar. He was one of my dad's good head horses, and, so, no, I don't really remember the first time. I wish I did. That'd be cool.

BRODIE: That'd be tough if you were 2. 

WILLIAMS: Yeah, for sure.

BRODIE: Well, besides your parents' connection to it, what attracts you to rodeo and specifically, this type, this breakaway roping? 

WILLIAMS: I think a lot of it. You know, rodeoing itself is very much a hard sport. It's different than a lot of other events because, you know, baseball players, football players, they're all on a contract and they get paid to show up and compete versus like us, we pay for our fuel, we pay for the entry fees to go to the rodeo, and then how we compete is how we make money.

And as you get better, the more brand partnership deals you get, and that's kind of how you end up making a lot of your money is through that too. But a lot of it comes down to, you know, you have to be the best and or at least striving to be the best to eventually make a living out of this.

BRODIE: Well, so you are one of the more successful people doing this. Was it difficult to get to that point for you? 

WILLIAMS: I think for sure, you know, there’s no event or sport you're going to be good at the first time you do it, or at least continue to stay good if you're trying to improve yourself. But I will say I got pretty lucky.

My dad, he trains people or he teaches people how to rope. And so it's always kind of every day in the practice pen is a lesson in a sense of we're trying to work on things, we're trying to get better. So, if we go to a jackpot and we don't do as good as we want to, OK, we take the good out and we look at the bad too. And we really study the bad and what we need to change and then we change it for the next time.

BRODIE: Have you found that you have had to make adjustments to how you think about what you're doing or how you do what you do over those years? 

WILLIAMS: For sure. I've had some injuries along the way that have made me kind of create some bad habits that I'm trying to figure out and learn how to overcome. But I think that's all kind of part of the process. I don't think there's very many athletes that haven't had at least one injury or so and you kind of hope that it stays away from the ligaments or tendons. And sadly, mine have been with ligaments and tendons a lot of the time.

I haven't broken very many bones. It's just been, you know, a tear here or a strain here. And so those are really hard to let yourself sit and rest long enough that you give it a good time to be ready to come back at full speed. But I think if you look at any run I've made, there's something I could tell you that I needed to change about it. So I don't think there's ever gonna be a time that I tell you, “oh yeah, I was perfect on that run.”

BRODIE: So you mentioned injuries and I wanna ask you about one that you had not all that long ago where it sounds like a horse kind of fell on you. Is that right? 

WILLIAMS: That's correct, unloading out of the trailer.

BRODIE: And what exactly happened? 

WILLIAMS: So we were actually getting back. It was really late at night. We had been to rodeos that whole weekend and we'd just gotten back home. And I went to unload him and he just slipped. And instead of like a normal horse that would just fall down the ramp and then stand up, I think he got scared. I was in front of him trying to back out and just get him to back up. And when he went to fall, he just lunged forward and tackled me on the trailer ramp and stepped on my foot and stepped on my knee.

And he's one of the biggest horses I'd ever actually owned at that point. And so having even just a little horse fall on you is going to hurt something, but having a horse as big as that horse fall, it's going to mess up a lot of things. And it's kind of crazy because when he stepped on me, it was Oct. 7. And then on the 8th and 9th, my foot was hurting, but it wasn't major. And then I went to my circuit finals in Texas and my foot was killing me all the way to the circuit finals. And I'm like, “I don't know what's up. I know my horse fell on me, but I mean, I've been roping and riding horses the last two days.”

And then it just I think I overused it right after it happened and so it was probably strained. And then using it and continuing to go because, you know, kind of the rodeo motto is, “if it isn't broken, you just keep going.” Unless it's really like dangling, you don't stop. And so, I think that was definitely a lesson I have to look back on and be like, “OK, did I probably do the smartest thing?” But I mean, if it happened again, you wouldn't really know if something's hurt or not and you don't really have time to just go to the doctor and get an X-ray just for fun.

BRODIE: Now, can I ask how old you are right now? 

WILLIAMS: I'm 21 years old.

BRODIE: Twenty-one. And so you've been obviously doing this as we've established for quite a while. Do you have a sense of how long you would like to keep doing this? 

WILLIAMS: I don't really know. That's a hard question because I think anyone's career can be determined by a couple of factors. Right now, I have a really good group of horses that are with me, but to be honest, the main reason I'm out here rodeoing is because I feel like this is my calling where I was supposed to be.

When I was going through high school, I was planning on my dad to buy my good horse Red Light that I won all the money at Kimes Ranch Million Dollar Breakaway with last year. He was going to buy me out of that horse, and I was going to go to nursing school and planned to be a NICU nurse or a labor and delivery. And, you know, I didn't feel peace about it and so I kept searching and asking questions.

And I was still seasoning Red Light at the time, kind of trying to figure it out, you know, because rodeo was still paying for a lot of the things I had going on. And I had a full ride to this really good nursing school, and I just had to do a rodeo for them. And then it's kind of been a whirlwind, honestly because I just turned 18 years old and I still had another year. I graduated at 19 and, you know, at 18, that's when I could go pro.

And so I kept experiencing, you know, kind of just asking the Lord where he wanted me to go and show me where he wanted me because I really wanted to do nursing and I truly felt like that kid being like, “I really want this. Can you just tell me this is OK so I can just do what I want?” And every time I kept asking, it kind of was shut down in one way or the other or something happened and I'd go to a different rodeo and I'd win.

And it's just, honestly looking back, it's crazy how I didn't see it at the time, but it's so easy to look back and see God's hand and everything that went on throughout 17 to 19 years old.