Addison Redd showed up at last month’s National High School Rodeo finals in Gillette, Wyoming, with a relaxed attitude.

Weeks earlier in June, Redd, a Bonneville High School junior, was crowned Utah High School rodeo queen and that had been her goal for the previous high school rodeo season.

Going to Wyoming for the finals was icing on the cake. Then she ended up winning national rodeo queen honors which, to use another cake analogy, was like a whole extra cake, also with icing.

“It took a while for it to sink in because this is something that I’ve wanted to accomplish for so long,” Redd said. “There are some days where I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh that’s me, I’m the national queen, I get to do that.'”

Redd competed against 42 other state rodeo queens in Gillette, plus some from Canada and Mexico.

There are eight categories in the rodeo queen contest: horsemanship, written test about NHSRA rules, impromptu speech, prepared speech, personal interview, appearance, personality and modeling.

She likened rodeo queen contests to a beauty pageant, albeit with horses. Redd won the horsemanship, personality and appearance categories outright and tied for first in the modeling category.

Her horse for the horsemanship portion of the contest is a 15-year-old named Whiz.

“Fun fact about him, he’s actually a two-time national champion now,” Redd said.

Her family bought Whiz from McKardy Kelly, a Utahn who was the 2019 national high school rodeo queen. Whiz having done this before was another reason Redd said she was calm during the competition.

“Whiz knows what he’s doing when he’s out there, he’s so funny,” she said.

Redd started riding horses when she was 4 years old and competing in IRHA reining shows when she was 6.

She’s now won pretty much everything there is to be won in rodeo queening — she also won the Utah junior high rodeo queen honor — so her next goal is to qualify for the Utah state rodeo finals in barrel racing on a 10-year-old horse named Lynx.

“My goal is to qualify for state in barrels and to become a little more competitive in goat tying. I started goat tying last year in the fall … queening it takes a lot of your time, so I wasn’t able to fully practice the way I should and prepare myself,” Redd said.

As the national high school rodeo queen, Redd will spend the next year being an ambassador for the National High School Rodeo Association and promoting the sport of rodeo, which involves traveling to rodeos all over and helping at youth rodeos.

Young Automotive also sponsored a truck for Redd and her family to use for the next year as she plans to go to about 20 high school rodeos in Utah during the 2022-23 season.

Redd is the latest in a decades-long line of national high school rodeo queens from the state of Utah.

Five national high school rodeo queens have come from Utah since 2000, following three Utahns winning the competition in the 1990s and three winning it in the ’80s.

Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at pcarr@standard.net, Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.

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