Hometown boy Colt Hillis was in the spotlight — and the sunlight — during the ever-popular bull-riding competition in the Bordertown high school rodeo on the first weekend of May in Lloydminster.
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With temperatures pushing 30 C on Saturday, May 3, it was a long, hot day of waiting for the senior high bull-riders who stepped into the prime-time evening show at the Lloyd exhibition grounds.
“Especially at these high school rodeos, you’re waiting all day, and you want to get it out of the way, kind of,” said Hillis, a Grade 12 student at Lloydminster Comprehensive High School. “You’ve got to sit around all day.
“At all those bull-riding events (outside of the school season), it’s just strictly bull-riding, so you just go there and you do your thing.”
The senior bull-riders entertained the Lloyd crowd in the final hour of a 12-hour program Saturday, and they did likewise again Sunday.
A day after his 18th birthday, Hillis was bucked off a testy bull without reaching a requisite eight-second ride Saturday evening.
“Not good today, but we’ll get ’em tomorrow,” he said. “There’s always tomorrow, and there’s always another rodeo.”
Sunday didn’t go as well as he had hoped, but Hillis planned to bounce right back the following weekend with Bull Riders Canada (BRC) semi-professional events in Cold Lake and Penhold.
The third annual Bordertown high school rodeo added another element for the small number of Lloydminster-area rodeo athletes. They’re used to travelling out of town and long distances to compete within the Saskatchewan High School Rodeo Association, so performing at home was an eventful experience on multiple fronts.
“It puts a little bit more pressure on you to do better,” Hillis said. “Everybody knows you and everybody is watching you, and you want to do the best you can.”
These are exciting times for Hillis, who comes from a rodeo family residing near Hillmond and about 15 minutes from Lloyd.
Next school year, he’s off to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to join the Laramie County Community College rodeo team. His brother Gage is in his sophomore year as a student — and bull-rider — at the same National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) school.
Colt Hillis signed with Laramie County shortly before Christmas 2024.
“I went down and toured the school,” he said. “It was cool.
“My brother went there the last two years now, and he kind of got me in there.”
In college, Hillis plans to study welding and continue his promising bull-riding career.
He has been riding bulls for about four years, after starting out on steers when he was eight years old — a decade ago.
Hillis hopes to finish his final high school season with a bang and qualify for the national championships. The provincial finals are May 22-25 in Maple Creek, Sask.
His spring/summer plans include multiple BRC semi-pro events.
“I might hit a couple of pro rodeos, too,” he said. “I’ll enter a couple of pro rodeos, now that I’m 18, and we’ll see how that goes.”
Hillis has weathered more than his share of injuries on the rodeo circuit, but he believes it’s all par for the course, especially for bull-riders.
“I had to get my left shoulder redone, so not the riding one,” he said. “I got surgery done there. I broke my arm about four times. Knocked out.
“I haven’t been too bad, but there’s been a couple (of major injuries). Whereas my brother lacerated his pancreas, punctured a lung and broke some ribs.”
But, there’s no quit in cowboys.
“Ah, you love it,” Hillis said of what keeps bull-riders coming back for more.
“You always want to do better than the last event.”
Just as he has looked up to his older brother, Hillis has been a role model to his younger sister, Allie. She’s in Grade 7 and competes in junior high rodeo, but she’s currently sidelined with an injury.
“She used to ride a little bit of steers, and she likes barrel racing and goat tying, all that good stuff,” Hillis said.
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