BY: DARCI MILLER
12/10/2021..PUEBLO, Colo. – Breakaway roper Tacy Kay Webb knew she wanted to be a nurse while attending high school in Madisonville, Texas.
She’s always been a people person, and her pediatrician advised her that she would be good at it and should pursue nursing as a career path. So she attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and hit the books hard so she could become a nurse as quickly as possible.
What the 24-year-old couldn’t have foreseen, however, was a global pandemic testing her this early in her career.
She had just begun her career as an ICU nurse when the COVID-19 pandemic began taking hold in the United States.
The last 21 months have been difficult for everyone, but for Webb, “difficult” barely even scratches the surface.
“It wears you out, especially as an ICU nurse, because by the time the COVID patients would get to us, they were so bad and so sick,” Webb said. “We were just having to do the best we could and go take care of these sick people, hoping that we weren’t going to get sick.”
During the first few months of the pandemic, when very little was known about the virus, how it spread or how deadly it was, Webb didn’t live at home with her family in fear of getting them sick.
Webb also says that dealing with the families of her patients was the most challenging part of her job.
“It was the same thing with patients, having to talk to their families and help them get through those times, because they couldn’t even come up there and be with their loved one,” Webb said. “The nurses, we had to be not only the caretaker, but the loved one too, because their families couldn’t even be up there to take care of them. I think that was the hardest thing. Taking care of them was hard, but having to listen to the desperation in the families’ voices over the phone was probably harder.”
Webb works three 12-hour ICU shifts each week, scheduling them around her rodeo schedule on the weekends. She arrives at work at 6:30 a.m. and leaves at about 7:30 p.m., spending hours with incredibly sick patients.
It’s an experience, she says, that has made her all the more grateful for what she has.
“It kind of gives you a perspective on your life,” Webb said. “I just remember going home and thinking about how blessed and how thankful I am because I get to go home to a healthy family, and I’m healthy. It definitely does kind of make you emotional at times. There’s times where my heart has just gone out so bad to the family, but at the end of the day, I just thank God extra for everything that I have because I can see how it’s devastating other people’s lives.”
Webb will be in action at the WCRA’s Cowtown Christmas Championship Rodeo on Dec. 15-18 in Fort Worth, Texas, which is the final Major event of the Triple Crown of Rodeo in 2021.
The WCRA Triple Crown of Rodeo is a trilogy of Major rodeos offering a $1 million bonus to any one athlete or collection of athletes who win first place in any three consecutive majors. The first stop of the 2021 series was held in Corpus Christi, Texas, followed by Days of ’47 Cowboy Games and Rodeo in Salt Lake City.
Webb was victorious at Days of ’47 and is therefore eligible for the Triple Crown of Rodeo should she win in Fort Worth.
“I think the Triple Crown of Rodeo is an amazing opportunity that the WCRA is trying to offer us athletes, but I also think that realistically, it’s going to be very hard to do, especially with the amount and the toughness of the breakaway ropers that are out there,” Webb said. “It’s definitely something I’m going to shoot for. But realistically, I’m just going to go make the best possible ropes I can, and if I end up on top, then it was God’s plan, and that’s what it was supposed to be like.”
After Webb received the gold medal in Salt Lake City, she wiped away tears as the crowd gave her a standing ovation for her work and sacrifices on the front line of the pandemic.
“It just made me want to burst into tears because it was so sweet,” Webb said. “All I could think about was me and the rest of my team, and how we put on the masks, and the gowning up, and just being in full dress and being in these COVID rooms for hours at a time, just sweating and working so hard to take care of these people and try to just help them get better. That’s what it made me think of, is all the hard work that we’ve been putting in over the last year and a half or so. And so to have people appreciate you like that and kind of understand what you’ve been through, it means so much.”
Moving forward into the new year and beyond, Webb’s goal is to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), which takes another few years of school. She plans to apply to programs in 2022 and hopefully go to school the following year and admits that she’ll probably have to set rodeo aside for a little bit.
But in the meantime, Webb will continue competing with nothing but joy and appreciation for simply being able to be there.
“I always have thought rodeo shouldn’t define you, but now that I’m a nurse and I see all of the real-life struggles people are going through, it really makes getting to go compete more fun and less serious,” Webb said. “It is serious, and you definitely want to win – I’m there to win just like anybody else – but my runs don’t define me. There’s people that are going through so much more than I am, so I should just be grateful.”
