Family, friends remember 2024 Miss Teen Rodeo Kansas for her hard work and passion

The 2024 Miss Teen Rodeo Kansas first got her start riding livestock when, as a child, she jumped on the back of a calf she helped rescue and raise.

The cow, which she and her siblings named Clover after 4-H, was mostly confused at first, but with practice would let Emma Catherine Brungardt ride around on her back while she grazed in the yard.

But those rides wouldn’t suffice for long.

Within a couple years, Brungardt put up signs around the small town of Bremen, which had a population of 51 in 2020, asking for age-appropriate work for a 10-year-old.

The money was so she could buy a donkey to ride.

She’d be breaking in mustangs to compete with just a few years after that.

She was a first-generation cowgirl who won multiple rodeo and 4-H competitions.

The 19-year-old died Oct. 4 in a single-vehicle accident that also wounded some of her teammates on the Colby Community College Rodeo Team.

She is survived by her parents, five siblings, grandparents and a boyfriend who she had planned to marry after she graduated in the spring. She is preceded in death by a younger brother.

No matter who you ask, Brungardt was undeniably hard working, had a passion for animals and a heart to teach others all she learned about them.

“It’s just been a devastating ripple throughout the rodeo community, because she was so influential,” said Scott Mathis, a pastor who Brungardt approached and connected with when she was a pre-teen after seeing him do a horse demonstration that taught Biblical principles. “And we thank God for her life and she lived a lot of living.”

“She lived a lot of life in her 19 years and impacted so many people for the good.”

It’s common to hear from anyone who knew Brungardt that she lived a lot of life in those 19 years. Lynette Steele-Coon, who worked as a mentor for Brungardt as part of curriculum requirements for seniors, said so as well.

“She’s the kind of kid that she would have probably been my best friend in high school,” Steele-Coon said. “She’s just somebody you want to be around. She makes you feel better about yourself … you just want to be around positive, hardworking, ethical people and fun and she was a blast. When I say goofball, she really was.”

Born early

Brungardt, the fifth of seven children in a blended family home, came six weeks early after her mother was rushed by ambulance to the hospital for a C-section.

Holly Brungardt said the emergency stemmed from her laughing during an episode of “Dirty Jobs” when Mike Rowe artificially inseminated a pig.

“It was so funny, we laughed so hard and we ended up with Emma six weeks early,” she said. “They kept her for just a week and then sent us home with her. She looked like a shriveled-up old man. She’s just been a go-getter ever since … She’s known what she wanted and worked for it. She had a passion.”

Michael and Holly Brungardt’s children all did 4-H. The desire for 4-H they think started after the Brungardts got dairy and meat goats.

At the time, they were living in a house at the edge of town in Bremen. The house had one bathroom.

The siblings soon learned you couldn’t lock the door to shower, since you were covered behind the curtain and the demand for the space was too high.

Even using the bathroom you’d have to put your hand or foot in front of the door to keep people out, according to Heather Mitchell, a half sister who is about 10 years older than Emma Brungardt.

“At one point, you just kind of gave up,” said Mitchell, recalling some of her favorite recent memories of coming home with her husband and children and “auntie Emma” leading them on horseback around the house. En route, her children would all ask, ‘Do we get to ride the horses?’”

Besides the bathroom situation at their childhood home, the children, and especially Brungardt, also wanted more animals, which meant more space.

“They wanted a cow, they wanted a pig, they just wanted more room to roam,” said Holly Brungardt.

They moved to an unused family home on 80 acres in Blue Rapids.

Clover the cow was soon added to the family. Emma Brungardt was around 8.

A friend called them about a calf born at a feedlot. The calf was theirs if they wanted it, but they were told it had a 50/50 shot at living.

“And (Brungardt) made sure that little calf pulled through,” Holly Brungardt said, adding she would bottle feed Clover and make sure she was warm. “And we still have that cow and it comes to its name.”

Emma Brungardt had even practiced saddling on Clover, who she also showed during 4-H.

Holly Brungardt said her daughter wasn’t ever supposed to ride the cow, but she wouldn’t have been able to stop her daughter, so she just tried to make sure she was safe and always at least had a sibling watching.

William Moore, a half brother who is about eight years older than Emma Brungardt, was watching as another sibling grabbed Clover’s feed bucket and shook it, making the cow run toward the perceived meal while Brungardt was riding her.

Brungardt rolled under the calf but didn’t get hurt.

She popped up and said:

‘I want to do that again,”’ Moore said, laughing. She had the “biggest smile on her face.”

He added: “I look up to Emma. Emma did what she loved and she did it in a way that inspires me to continue doing what I love. She does it with a smile on her face, or she did it with a smile on her face. Whether she was winning or losing, she always had a smile on her face because she was doing what she loved … I’m going to use that to continue living my life by doing what I love.”

The cow wasn’t fast enough for Brungardt’s riding ambitions.

She hung up signs around town “for yard work or other 10 year old appropriate jobs” with a drawing of her next to a bin of yard equipment and a lawn mower.

She raised $100 that summer. Enough to buy a donkey. She brushed the donkey and spent time with it.

One day she trotted with it up to the barn and back.

Then, on another day, again while her mother was inside and just happened to glance out the window like when she first saw her daughter hop on Clover, she saddled the donkey and hopped on.

It was the first time the donkey had a saddle on.

“The donkey took off like a rocket, just at a dead run,” Holly Brungardt said. “And I was like, oh it’s going to buck, and she was holding on to the back of a saddle.”

The donkey ran about a hundred yards and stopped at a gate.

Emma Brungardt stayed on.

Studying her craft

The family bought its first couple horses at a horse sale in Fairbury, Nebraska.

One of the horses kept acting out, so the family didn’t keep her. The other they named Pal. The American Quarter Horse died not long after that. The original owner felt bad and gave them another horse.

A friend who came to trim her hooves asked them if they knew what the brand on the horse meant. They didn’t. He told them it meant the horse was at one point a mustang.

“That piqued everyone’s interest in the mustang,” said Sophie Simmet, who is Brungardt’s older sister by about two years.

Simmet and Brungardt started soaking up all the knowledge they could about horses, reading books and watching hours of Clinton Anderson DVDs on horsemanship.

Brungardt also sought all the knowledge she could from others, including Mathis, who she met around her preteen years when he did a horse demonstration.

“They didn’t have a lot of resources so she would work her tail off to become a horse woman,” he said. “She understood that people’s investment in her and her hard work allowed her to have a voice with younger people and other people … She’s just very loving and kind, and young girls were enamored with the rodeo queen, and she was such a good representative of Christ and the sport of rodeo.”

The family and Mathis stayed in touch. He said in his last texts with her she was asking for advice about helping a limping horse.

‘Thank you, pastor Scott,’” she texted back after he gave advice.

The unexpected loss of her younger brother in 2021 pushed her even further into following what she loves, her mother said.

Her skills continued to improve.

To support Brungardt doing rodeo, Holly Brungardt and her daughter started selling homemade cinnamon rolls in a six-town area. They made between 32 and 64 dozen a week to sell.

The rolls became a local commodity that would sell out within a couple hours of them setting up shop outside a local business.

“Rodeo is expensive. If you’ve got kids that might not be the way you want to go,” Holly Brungardt said. “But I’ll tell you what, it’s like a family, so it was worth it.”

Rodeo Queen

At Valley Heights High School, Brungardt would help send off an athletic team to a state sporting event by running with her horse alongside the bus as it left town while holding a school flag. And, during her senior year, she approached administration and asked about running with her horse across the football field while holding a flag before kickoff.

“It was just a nice little additional to a class 2A size football game,” said Mike Savage, her former principal and English teacher. “It just kind of put everything in perspective.”

The high school mascot is a mustang.

Brungardt became grand champion twice (2019 and 2021) and placed twice (2018 and 2022) in the Wild Horse Mustang Challenge put on at the Kansas State Fair in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management.

The event involved taking home a yearling mustang, breaking it and training with it and then competing with the mustang within a few months.

“She was kind of one of the horse crazy girls,” said Crystal Cowan, a wild horse and burro specialist with BLM. “Emma loved rodeo and horses and showing and competition and everything about it.”

Outside of the competition, she was also an advocate for mustangs. She volunteered to help other youth in the program and did events where she would show and talk about her mustang.

“She was just a huge advocate … she was such a special kid,” Cowan said.

Wild Horse Youth Challenge president Tammy Halsey said Brungardt was “incredibly humble” for all that she accomplished.

“She lived life big and with a purpose and at an age that was kind of uncommon.” Halsey said. “She just lived life with a purpose. It’s a tragic end to a beautiful story.”

Teaching others

Laney Thomas was new to the rodeo scene when she entered the 2022 North Central Kansas Saddle Club Rodeo Queen competition. Brungardt could tell it was her first rodeo.

“And immediately once you seen and met Emma you knew she was going to be the rodeo queen,” said Lisa Thomas, Laney Thomas’ mother. “She was put together, she knew stuff. It was like she knew everything.”

Brungardt took Laney Thomas under her wing.

“It was very surprising to me that someone that young could step up and be a role model for someone the same age,” Thomas said, adding she is a year younger than Brungardt.

Brungardt won rodeo queen . She was 16.

She and Thomas also made friends.

After one sleepover, Thomas went with Brungardt to a rodeo at Cowboy Country Church, where Brungardt attended. She encouraged Thomas to enter a goat tie competition, which she did, after Brungardt taught her how to tie up the goat by making a tie around her boot.

Brungardt helped lead Thomas’ horse down the ring before Thomas had to jump off and tie the goat. Thomas placed and got to pick a prize.

“Emma was a true rodeo queen,” said family friend and rodeo rider Cali Ridder, who is a member of the church. “Not only did she dress up and ride the horse around circles and carry flags, but she ties cows and ropes and breakaways and goats. She does all the rodeo, not just look pretty on the horse.”

She said “Emma never just watched anything. She dived into it.”

Meeting the man she planned to marry

She visited the Colby Community College campus multiple times before taking a rodeo scholarship starting in the 2023-2024 school year after graduating from Valley Heights USD 498 in spring 2023.

On a college visit, she met her future team roping partner and boyfriend, Wesley King.

Just a couple months into the fall semester, a cow got out of the sale barn King worked.

He knew Brungardt could rope and that she had a big horse, a mustang she trained and appropriately named Big Guy, that could help with recovering the cow.

He messaged her on social media and asked if she would help.

When asked if the horse and her skills were the reason or if to be closer to her or both, he said:

“I always told myself that if I could find a girl that could outrope me, I am gonna date her and she damn sure could outrope me any day of the week,” he said.

He grew up in Utah and started roping when he was 2.

It was her first time roping a loose cow. The cow rushed Emma’s horse and lifted him off the ground on impact, but Big Guy stood upright and wasn’t hurt. They eventually got the cow tied up and loaded.

The two retold the story in person to Brungardt’s parents about a week later when she brought King home to Blue Rapids, which is about a four hour drive from Colby. She recalled to her parents how, after it was all done, she told King that was her first time roping a loose cow, which startled him because he would have hesitated to ask her if had he known that because of the danger.

While at home, they competed in a rodeo at Cowboy Country Church. She had told him he could win a buckle, which he did.

They started dating about a week after that.

They planned to marry when she graduated in the spring.

Sophie Simmet, the sibling Brungardt was closest to, said she spent time with her rodeo team this week and heard the funny stories they had to say about her sister.

“If someone got much in their head she would look at them and say ‘red chicken nugget, blue chicken nugget’” and kept going through all the colors of the rainbow like so,” Simmet said.

Chicken nuggets were her favorite meal.

Funeral fit for a cowgirl

About 250 people attended a candlelight vigil for Brungardt the night after the accident, Holly Brungardt said.

A funeral is planned for Saturday at the Blue Rapids school gymnasium. The family is expecting a large crowd.

Her favorite red felt cowboy hat, which Moore, her brother, went deep into his savings to buy along with a red dress and new boots for the Miss Teen Rodeo Kansas contest, has been set up on flowers on her casket for the funeral. The tiara is on it. Red was her favorite color.

Her casket will then be taken to Prospect Hill Cemetery by a wagon pulled by Belgian draft horses owned by pastor Chuck Asbury, whose daughter Brungardt helped train in the wild horse youth competition.

King will be leading while pulling her horse, Big Guy, behind, on the riderless horse in honor of her.

”We had our own little special way with horses,” King said about their shared love. “She knew everything about rodeo, inside and out. Rodeo was her life. Horses were her way of life. She wanted to start a ranch with me and she wanted to continue on with the rodeo way of life.”

King said he plans to get baptized Sunday at Cowboy Country Church.

“That’s what she would have liked to see so I am gonna go ahead and do it,” he said.

He also plans to continue other plans that she left behind, by training her horses Hot Sauce and Big Guy. He hopes to qualify for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and compete on Big Guy in the 2024 National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

“I’m gonna still make her horses the best that I can make them,” he said. “I made a promise, I am going to keep … I am still going to own a ranch one day and it’s going to be something she’d be proud of.”

A GoFundMe to help with funeral costs can be found at shorturl.at/WDpWJ