(Canadian Cowboys Association/Facebook)

By Ryan Lambert

Cowboy and Cowgirl of the Year

Cowboy and Cowgirl of the year Awards handed out ahead of CCA Finals

Oct 24, 2025 | 11:59 AM

The Canadian Cowboy Association (CCA) finals are taking place at the Access Communications Centre in North Battleford from this week, wrapping up on Sunday.

Earlier on Thursday, the CCA Finals kickoff banquet was held at the Don Ross Arena in North Battleford, where the WPD Ambulance Cowboy and Cowgirl of the Year awards were handed out.

Jill Switzer won the Cowgirl of the Year award. She has been the breakaway roping director with the CCA for four years, with the event making its debut at the Calgary Stampede this past summer.

“It’s a big acknowledgement of what I’ve been trying to do for the breakaway roping and bring it to be a major event in rodeo in the CCA,” said Switzer. “It’s definitely a dream come true.”

Switzer mentioned that she has had some family members win the award, including her father and uncle, so it was a big honour for her to receive the award as well.

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Breakaway roping wasn’t a major event when she joined the CCA, but she was made director when it became one, and she’s helped bring the event to what it is.

“Just making it so that it is good entertainment for the crowd and it’s competitive for the cowgirls and kind of just trying to share my love of the breakaway roping with everybody around me and all the fans, and everybody in the rodeo world,” said Switzer.

The c

owboy of the Year recipient was the Robin Poirier, the president of the CCA. “It means pretty much everything. It shows me that over the year that I’ve spent on this board and as the president, that I’m greatly appreciated,” said Poirier.

Poirier has spent 14 years with the CCA as a committee rep, working his way up the ladder year by year to get to where he has gotten today. He became director at large after two terms as a committee rep. He was heavily involved with the rodeo finals when they were in Swift Current and then Regina. He became president in 2018.

In terms of his day by day on the job, Poirier gives a lot of credit to the people he works with doing a great job with the association. “I have a fantastic board, and they take a lot of the workload on so I just oversee everything. It’s a pretty good position.”

The CCA finals kicked off on Oct. 23 and will be going until Oct. 26 in North Battleford. There is one local competitor, Battleford’s Dawson Loewen who competed in steer wrestling. In his first attempt, he had a time of 14.9 seconds, finishing in fourth place on the day. He’ll have more attempts as the events continue throughout the weekend.

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Ryan.Lambert@pattisonmedia.com