Los Alamos middle schooler Paige Trujillo qualifies for national rodeo team

Paige Trujillo turned a state title in girls goat tying into a ticket to one of junior rodeo’s biggest stages, giving Los Alamos County a rare local connection to a sport usually rooted far from the townsite. The Los Alamos Middle School eighth grader, who lives in Abiquiu, earned a place on New Mexico’s National Junior High Rodeo Team and will compete at the 21st Annual National Junior High Finals Rodeo from June 21 to June 27 at Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

Her event is one of rodeo’s most technical timed competitions. Girls goat tying demands speed, balance and horsemanship, with the rider dismounting, reaching the goat, tying the legs correctly and getting back to the horse fast enough to post a competitive time. The national finals schedule lists girls goat tying among the timed events, with performance times set for Sunday, June 21 at 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and a short-go round Saturday, June 27 at 7 p.m. The event is presented by Gist Silversmiths.

The New Mexico High School Rodeo Association says the state is a member of the National High School Rodeo Association, founded by Claude Mullins in 1949. Its results pages for 2025-2026 list state finals and national qualifiers, underscoring that Trujillo’s berth came through a formal statewide competition pathway, not a one-time selection. For a young athlete, that means months of practice, travel and repeat performances under pressure before a national field of peers.

The local significance reaches beyond one athlete. Los Alamos Middle School is part of Los Alamos Public Schools and serves the wider community, including students who live beyond Los Alamos and White Rock. Trujillo’s success also reflects a broader northern New Mexico pattern: in 2024, coverage reported that Teagan Trujillo and Reed Trujillo, then eighth graders at Los Alamos Middle School, and Paige Trujillo, then a sixth grader at Aspen Elementary School, all lived in Abiquiu and qualified for the New Mexico state and provincial junior high rodeo team. That earlier report also said Paige competed in the 12-and-under boys and girls goat tying division and was selected to Team Re-Vita Equine.

For Los Alamos, where youth achievement is usually measured in classrooms, labs, courts and stages, Trujillo’s national qualification adds another lane. It shows how students in this county and its surrounding communities can build serious competitive résumés in nontraditional paths, and it sends one Abiquiu middle schooler from a local school to a national arena in Oklahoma.