FORT WORTH, Texas – If there’s a rope in Debbie Fabrizio’s hand, chances are she’ll have a smile on her face.
If she’s winning money while participating in her favorite pastime, all the better.
Fun and money will both be on the menu when Fabrizio competes at the Women’s Rodeo World Championships (WRWC) at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas in May 2023. Presented by the World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA) along with the Professional Bull Riders (PBR), the world’s richest all women’s rodeo event annually pays out $750,000 to ladies competing in barrel racing, team roping and breakaway roping.
Fabrizio guaranteed her participation in the lucrative event with a strong showing at the Northern Breakaway Roping and Team Roping Championships in Rapid City, South Dakota on August 22-23, 2022.
The event was a stop on the WRWC’s Qualification Series (QS), events which offer automatic berths into the WRWC. Aside from QS event winners, only those in the top 20 of the WRWC Leaderboards are eligible to compete in Fort Worth. There are five more QS events left on the schedule, scattered across the country from Florida to Arizona to Illinois.
“It was great,” Fabrizio said of the event which is held during the Central States Fair & Rodeo, which she also attended in 2021. “It’s during the rodeo as well so you get to go up there and rope for two or three days. It’s run really well; it’s one of the best ones to go to and for sure one to go back to.”
Though she now calls Pueblo, Colorado home, Fabrizio grew up in Missouri on ranch where her father raised feeder and stocker cattle. Saying she was the “son he never had,” she roped with her father both on the ranch and in the arena. She was hooked early on the challenge roping presented, and, after moving to Colorado, began to compete wherever possible.
“As much as I want,” she laughed when asked how often she goes roping. Though COVID slowed things down some, and younger daughter and main partner Rylea moved to Texas, joining her older sister Jordan Jo Hollabaugh, Fabrizio still ropes everyday with husband, Tom. She heads in the higher numbered roping events.
“We do the World Series roping, some WPRA and I try to go to all of the WCRA events.”
Fabrizio stays busy with her custom home building business too. She fell into it 27 years ago when she and her husband built their own home.
“I really liked it. I’ve got an entrepreneurial spirit and like to do my own thing so I went and got my license and got started,” Fabrizio explained. “My husband is a plumber so we already knew everyone in the field, all the subcontractors.”
Fabrizio does everything from designing the homes to handling financing plus running the job once construction begins. She averages about three to four homes in a typical year.
Article Courtesy of WRCA
