PUEBLO, Colo. – Kelsie Chace is a hard woman to pin down.

The week preceding the Fourth of July – famously referred to as Cowboy Christmas – is an especially busy one on the calendar, and Chace was nonchalant as she ticked off her competition schedule.

“We were in Cody, Wyoming, this morning, and we just got to Killdeer, North Dakota,” Chace said last Thursday. “We had (a rodeo) Tuesday, one Wednesday, two today, one tomorrow, one Saturday, one Sunday. Busy week.”

Chace had started at home in Stephenville, Texas, and had already spent close to 30 hours on the rodeo trail that week. But since the Western sports world has begun to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has also been using her time wisely.

Chace has used the “nominate, win and you’re in” (NWYI) system to qualify herself for the inaugural Women’s Rodeo World Championship, which will be held Nov. 3-7 at the South Point Arena in Las Vegas.

The three-time WPRA breakaway roping champion has not only earned a berth in her signature event, but in team roping as well.

“They’re giving out $60,000 in every event. I’m going to try to get in as many events as I can,” Chace said with a laugh. “I’d like to maybe get one in the heading. I don’t have a barrel horse so I won’t be running barrels, but if I could get out there and have a chance to do it in the heading too, that would be awesome.”

Up to 16 athletes per discipline – breakaway roping, barrel racing and team roping (heading and heeling) – can earn an NWYI through select events. Athletes qualifying for the WRWC via an NWYI compete in their own separate pool in Las Vegas, from which the Top 4 advance directly to the finals. The remaining 12 then enter the leaderboard pool, where they have the chance to compete against the athletes that qualified through points on the WCRA Leaderboard.

Chace won the average in heeling at the Hill Productions All Girl Team Roping in Hamilton, Texas, over Memorial Day Weekend, and in breakaway roping at HJK Productions in Bonham, Texas, on June 21.

“That was a really good day for me,” Chace said of her performance in Bonham. “I won two of the three rounds, and I got first and second in the average. So that was a really good day just in the jackpot world, but then of course, it was a bonus that it was a NWYI.”

The NWYI system being a bonus is what attracted Chace to it. It required no additional work or travel, and now she can simply look ahead to November, knowing that her spot in Las Vegas is secure.

“I was already going to those two jackpots, so the fact that I could just nominate and have a chance to win and get there is amazing,” she said. “I didn’t have to go anywhere extra, or anywhere special. That was already on my list of things to go to, so I just got to nominate and qualify. Of course, I could still keep nominating and stay in the top four in points, if I want to go through that pool. But I know that I already have a spot, so that’s easier on the mind. I don’t have to keep rushing down the road and trying to get more places.”

Regardless, Chace will still be hitting the rodeo trail hard, and is currently in the midst of an incredibly successful season. She won the breakaway roping at the WCRA’s Royal City Roundup in Kansas City, Missouri, in February, and by the time she finished fourth at The American in March, she’d already won $100,000 on the season.

The Western sports world then ground to a halt during the pandemic, but Chace took the time to slow things down and work on her horsemanship at home, where she lives with fellow breakaway roper and 19-time WPRA champion Jackie Crawford and her husband Charly Crawford, himself a nine-time National Finals Rodeo qualifier in heading.

“It’s awesome. We get to feed off each other,” Chace said. “Of course she’s one of the best in the business at riding horses and training horses and roping. And Charly as well. So it’s been good. I’ve learned a lot down there. It’s fun being around those two. We always say ‘Iron sharpens iron,’ so I want to be down there around the best.”

Chace was born and raised in Cherokee, Oklahoma, and moved in with the Crawfords following her graduation from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She returned to SWOSU to be the assistant coach for the rodeo team for the 2017 and 2018 seasons before moving back to Texas.

“That was one of the funnest times,” Chace said of her time as a coach. “I have a degree in education, so that’s kind of right up my alley. I really did enjoy it. I like seeing people grow and make changes and win just as much as I do.”

While Chace may one day put her degree in education to use again, for now, she’s focusing on breakaway roping full time, and recognizes that she can only do so because of the increased opportunities for breakaway ropers.

When she was younger, Chace remembers that not every amateur rodeo had a breakaway roping competition. Now, she says, it’s everywhere.

With the opportunity to win big money thanks to institutions like the WCRA and The American, breakaway ropers are truly breaking out.

“It’s everything,” Chace said. “We work at it every day and it’s something that we love, and to be able to do it at that level and for that much money, for one is life-changing, but two, that’s the biggest goal you can have. So that’s pretty cool, that we get to go to the very top. We’re not just stuck in the middle anymore. That’s pretty special to us. Now with the WCRA, and now we’re getting to go to the all-girl Finals in Vegas, everything keeps getting bigger and better, and it’s going to stay life-changing.”