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While other high school students get on the bus for school, Molly Hill scoops horse feed.

Hill, 16, of Carbondale, said in a typical day her four horses eat breakfast before she does. She then works on her online schoolwork before she can exercise each one. In the evening she practices with one of her horses at either the arena down the road, or an arena in Anna.

During breaks from homework she ropes a steer dummy between the refrigerator covered in horse magnets in the kitchen, and the family living room decorated with pictures of cowboys in the field and a steel horse clock.

Hill’s days revolve around caring for and practicing rodeo events with her horses just as her family members’ lives tend to revolve around her sport.

“It’s just so much fun; it’s addictive,” she said.

At 8 years old, Hill bought her first horse, and at 12 she competed in her first rodeo. She was the first in her family to pick up the sport, although both of her parents grew up with horses.

“When I first got started my parents did not think it was going to be something I would keep doing, they thought it was going to be a stage just like basketball or soccer, you know people don’t usually follow through with that, they just play it here or there and then they get tired of it,” she said. “So they didn’t want to spend very much money so we got cheap horses and started out slow … but I kept asking and said I was ready for a better horse.”

Now, in her third year of high school rodeo, she is third in the state for all around girls leaders. She is first in girls cutting, sixth in the state in barrel racing, eighth in breakaway roping, seventh in pole bending seventh in goat tying and ninth in her favorite event: team roping.

Most weekends she and her parents load the horses and all of their supplies in their horse trailer with an attached living facility for the family to sleep in and travel to Illinois High School Rodeo Association rodeos.

Gina Hill, Molly’s mother, said unlike most high school sports, parents at a rodeo don’t just sit in the bleachers and watch. They volunteer to set up poles and barrels and rake the arena as well as making sure the horses are taken care of.

“In rodeo, family means praying together, eating together, doing chores together and traveling together. We actually communicate and talk and have a relationship,” Hill said.

For the Hills, rodeo is a lifestyle and a yearlong commitment they adjusted to once Molly became invested.

“I can’t give everything the attention I used to give but I try my hardest. We still cook together and chores get done, but now my house is dusty, it was never dusty before,” she said.

For the younger athletes, rodeo teaches more than how to tie a goat and rope a steer. Tim Glasco, owner of Glasco’s Triple G Arena in Anna where Molly practices roping and learns from Glasco, said the sport teaches responsibility and integrity.

He said it is a sport anyone can pick up but they have to be dedicated.

“It’s not something you can half do,” he said. “It’s a lifestyle.”

Molly does not plan on giving up that lifestyle any time soon. She hopes to go on to the collegiate level and then train horses.

“It’s something I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

Sarah Schneider can be reached at [email protected], @sschnimedia or 536-3311 ext. 255.