SHE KNOWS THE ROPES : Jackie Clark Ran Away With the Rodeo While Her Friends at Thousand Oaks High Were Running Off With Guys; Now She’s One of the Best Women Riders in the Western U.S.

Jackie Clark wanted to be an athlete in the worst way. But that’s about the only way she seemed to perform at Thousand Oaks High.

She tried softball. She tried track. She tried swimming. She couldn’t make a team in any of those sports.

So she was through with athletics? Not quite.

Clark wound up in the state finals for the Lancers after all--as a rodeo rider. She competes in goat tying, barrel racing, team roping and breakaway calf roping.

You didn’t know high schools were involved in rodeos? Well, neither did Clark. But once she found out, she used the skills she had acquired in gymkhana--a riding competition for youngsters--and junior rodeo activities to reach the state finals in goat tying and breakaway roping as a junior. She added team roping and barrel racing as a senior.

Only the $4,000 it would have required to compete in the nationals in Douglas, Wyo., prevented her from going further as a high school senior.

“I love it,” she said of her sport. “While the other kids were taking part in other activities, I was going home to practice. I couldn’t wait to get home.”

These days, Clark, 20, does much of her practicing at Pierce College, where she is a member of the host team for the Intercollegiate Rodeo scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Rodeo is Clark’s world, and welcome to it. “People in rodeo are more down to earth,” she said. “They know what’s going on.”

It’s not a world Clark inherited as a birthright. This is no transplanted farm girl fulfilling her destiny. Her world was suburbia, U.S.A.: the shopping malls and video arcades of Thousand Oaks.

Oh, she always wanted to ride horses, and own one if possible. But that’s as far as it went until New Year’s Day, 1973, when the Clarks went out for a family drive and stopped at a ranch in Simi Valley. George Clark, a truck driver by trade, asked if his 8-year-old daughter could ride one of the horses.

It was love at first gallop, and before the day was done, George Clark had plopped down $250 for the horse, an animal subsequently named Miss J.

Jackie Clark was off to the races. Literally. She was soon competing in gymkhanas, guiding her horse into barrel racing, speed barrel and figure eight events.

Her father also got involved. “We got into team roping,” Jackie said. “I head and he would heel.” Translation: Jackie lassoed the horns of a fleeing calf while on horseback, then her father would throw a rope around its legs.

By the time she was 16, Jackie Clark was competing in the California Junior Rodeo Assn. In her first event, she won a belt buckle and was hooked.

She went on to become the first female in that organization’s history to make its finals in team roping.

From there, she went to the High School Rodeo Assn., then to the Intercollegiate Rodeo Assn., and--who knows?--may someday compete in the Professional Women’s Rodeo Assn.

The Clark family moved onto a Thousand Oaks property that contained nearly a full acre of land, and soon became an animal farm. Today, the Clark menagerie consists of six horses, seven goats, five dogs, two cats, a rabbit and a rooster that insists on sleeping on the dryer in the garage.

Some cannot identify with the Clark life style.

“I got to travel a lot for competitions,” Jackie said. “I got to see a lot of the state, going to Quincy, Salinas, Palm Springs. Most of the other kids in my school, they were just going down the road. They asked me what I did, but sometimes they didn’t understand. They were in Bobby Sox (softball). I was in junior rodeo. It was like we were raised on two different sides of the track.”

But she has no doubt about which side she belongs on. Not even when she is faced with the reality of competing in a sport in which rider and horse have been known to part in mid-stride with disastrous results.

“Sometimes you get nervous before you go,” she said, “but I’m not scared. You know what you are going to do because you have practiced, practiced, practiced. You just have to block out any fears and do what you have practiced.”

Notes

Clark is fifth in goat tying, sixth in barrel racing, sixth in breakaway and sixth all-around among the women Intercollegiate Rodeo Assn. riders in this region, which encompasses California and Nevada. Clark would like at least to place second in one event to qualify for this year’s national finals in Bozeman, Mont. After that, she would like to attend Colorado State, where she could continue to compete while pursuing a second career goal of becoming a veterinarian. . . .

She’s part of a team that consists of five men--Clayton Price, Wade Denny and Darrin Finan of Canoga Park, Randy Gulliory of Thousand Oaks, and John Perry of Burbank. Besides Clark, the team’s women are Kimberley Raymond of Canoga Park and Tammy Kauzdarich of Newhall. . . .

The Intercollegiate Rodeo offers a look at a pretty good cross section of the schools in California and Nevada that do compete. Signed up for the Pierce event are Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Fresno State, Nevada Reno, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Chico, Hartnell College, Yuba Community College, Hancock College, Kings River Community College, West Hills College, Merced College, American River Community College and College of the Sequoias. . . .

Wechsler, who competed for Pierce in rodeo in 1965 and ‘66, is now in his 15th year as the school’s rodeo adviser. “I prefer that title to coach,” he said. “Actually, I’m more of a friend. In this sport, because of the danger factor, you get real close. I try to help the kids out any way I can. If we’ve got a rodeo coming up and they need help to get there, I’ll take the money out of my own pocket.”

Wechsler, who recruited Clark out of high school, said that money can be a real problem in the sport. He estimates it cost his students $25,000 to suit up and compete in the 15 rodeos scheduled this year by the school. Through fund-raising events and with aid from the student body, Wechsler keeps 7 bucking horses, 5 bulls, 11 calves, 6 steers and 4 goats--$10,000 worth of livestock--on campus.