By Erik Ness
Director of Communications and Media Relations,
New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau

A 20 year-old cowgirl from the rain-rich pastures of Western Oregon, and a Tularosa roper with an eye for engineering, are the winners of the “DuBois Award” for All Around Cowgirl and Cowboy on the New Mexico State University Rodeo Team. Bailey Gow, a gifted rodeo athlete from Roseburg, Oregon, picked up the Dubois Award for her individual and team efforts.

Ty Trammell of Tularosa, New Mexico, and two-time recipient of the G.B. Oliver, Jr. rodeo scholarship, was the DuBois Award winner for All-Around Cowboy. He is a senior at NMSU majoring in survey engineering. Prior to his college career, Trammell attended Tularosa High School. In 2001 he and his roping partner, James Gilliland, were the National High School Rodeo Finals champion team ropers.

The presenter and founder of the award, Frank DuBois, said that Gow and Trammell are outstanding representatives for New Mexico State University and for the Grand Canyon Region of college rodeo. “Bailey is the first person in history to win All Around Cowgirl four years in a row in Oregon High School Rodeo. Now her streak continues at New Mexico State and we couldn’t be more proud of her skills in the arena and in the classroom,” DuBois said.

Trammell who hails from a long-time agricultural family in Otero County, noted that, “No one has done as much for the NMSU rodeo program as Frank DuBois,” which he said made receiving the award an additional honor. Trammell’s events while on the rodeo team were team roping and calf roping. DuBois said, “Ty is an exceptional athlete and I especially enjoyed presenting him the award as I had roped with both his grandfather and his father.”

In her final year in high school Gow sent her resume to fifteen select universities with rodeo programs. “I went and looked at them all and I picked New Mexico State,” she says proud of her final choice. She noted that the warm, dry climate in Las Cruces and the region was an additional incentive. Her parents are ranchers and run a cow/calf operation near Roseburg. As opposed to water-scarce New Mexico where irrigation is used to water hay fields, Gow says, “there’s not a pipe on the place” referring to the usual, ample rain ranchers receive an hour from the Pacific Ocean. Gow is also the All Around Cowgirl for the Grand Canyon Region of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA). For that effort she won a saddle from the Grand Canyon Region at the same ceremonies.

The DuBois Award is a special cast bronze, mounted sculpture of a horse, by world renowned artist Curtis Fort.

Like many others on the NMSU Team, Gow and Trammell are also the recipients of DuBois NMSU Rodeo Scholarships. “He has done some amazing things for the NMSU Rodeo Team,” Gow said of Dubois.

Since the advent of the DuBois Scholarship Program in 2001, the number of students on rodeo scholarships at New Mexico State has grown from four to forty athletes, twenty men and twenty women.

For more information on the NMSU Rodeo Team or DuBois Scholarship Program contact coach Jim Dewey Brown 1-505-646-3659.