Robyn Gaffney

Robyn Gaffney will receive this year’s Sharon Shoulders Award. Named in honor of the late Jim Shoulders wife, this award was created in 2009 to honor the women who have made a difference in the sport of professional bull riding. More than 30 years later, Michael Gaffney vividly remembers the first time he saw his future wife. They had never met until he saw her one night at a dance following a youth rodeo in the northwest corner of New Mexico — not far from the famous four corners, where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona all meet. “I thought what a beautiful person,” he recalled, “and I had only been around her for just a few minutes. She was wearing the tightest stinkin’ pants you’d ever seen in your life – just because it was the early ‘80s – tight pants and like a satin maroon shirt.” She was six months older than him. He was smitten. And still is.