Students in Youth Guidance’s BAM and WOW programs visited Rodeo for Lives in Crete, Ill. to learn about horses, history, and resilience.
CRETE, Ill. — The gravel road announced their arrival before the ranch did, slowing the bus, shifting the rhythm, letting the students know they were somewhere different before they could see it.
Sixteen teenagers from Noble Baker College Prep—hoodies pulled tight against a steady April rain—stepped off a yellow school bus and into a large wood barn far removed from the South Side of Chicago. There were no sirens here. No crowded hallways. Just the low rustle of wind over green open fields, the soft stomp of hooves, and the occasional huff of a horse—an exhale that, as they would soon learn, meant more than it sounded.
Inside, they were greeted not just by horses, but by a rodeo family.
There was Robert Hughes, a retired N.F.L. fullback turned full-time cowboy. Beside him stood his wife, Marissa, and his mother, Blanche, along with longtime family friends Mike Latting and his sister, Tracy, and rising steer wrestler Hunter Wylie—all helping welcome students to the Hughes family ranch, 30 miles south of the city. The ranch is home to Rodeo for Lives, a nonprofit dedicated to introducing young people—especially those from urban communities—to rodeo and equine therapy.
The trip itself was the result of careful coordination back in Chicago. BAM counselor Andrei Heward-Mills and WOW counselor Desiree Sheppard organized the visit, working together to create an experience that extended learning beyond the classroom into something lived.
Inside the barn, surrounded by horses with names like Chocolate Chip, Gumbo and Apache, Tracy Latting gathered the students close.
“Animals talk,” she told them. “If you listen.”
Tracy, an equine massage therapist, was there alongside her brother, Mike, a lifelong rodeo rider. The Latting family’s roots in rodeo run deep: Mike graduated from the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo on a rodeo scholarship and went on to become the International Professional Rodeo Association’s Central Rocky Mountain Regional champion in both bareback bronc and bull riding. He later built a career with his father, Thyrl, producing rodeo events across the country—bringing the sport to county fairs, festivals, and arenas throughout the Midwest and beyond.
“I come from the horses,” Robert told the students. “That’s my happy place.”
For many of the students, all participants in Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man (BAM) and Working on Womanhood (WOW) programs, it was their first time meeting real-life cowboys and cowgirls, and their first time this close to a horse. Some had never seen one outside of television. Now they were being asked not just to look, but to notice: the rhythm of breath, the language of movement, and the discipline required to care for an animal.
Outside, rain tapped steadily against the barn roof. Inside, barn cats scurried through the hay and around the horse stalls.
A Cowboy’s Second Act
The ranch belongs to Robert, a former N.F.L. player who once suited up for the Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts, and Arizona Cardinals. But long before the stadium lights and packed crowds, he knew a different arena.
“I come from the horses,” he told the students. “That’s my happy place.”
Raised on Chicago’s West Side, Robert grew up straddling two worlds: football and rodeo. The latter, he says, shaped him just as much as the former: the discipline, the patience, the mental toughness required to get thrown off and climb back on anyway.
That legacy was built at home. Blanche remembers it clearly—horses boarded outside the city, weekends spent riding, learning, competing.
“We just took our kids out,” she said, referring to herself and her husband. “From babies, this is what we did.”
After a six-year professional football career, Robert returned to that first love, a passion he now shares with his three children. In 2019, he founded Rodeo for Lives, guided by a simple motto: Transforming Lives One Rodeo at a Time.
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Robert said. “So we bring it to you.”
On a rainy Monday in April, that mission unfolded in real time, inside a barn filled with BAM and WOW students.
Learning the Language of Horses
The lessons began with the basics: how to approach a horse without startling it. Why you never walk behind one. How to clean a hoof—a careful, almost surgical act involving a metal pick and steady hands.
Tracy Latting demonstrated, lifting a horse’s leg and pointing to a triangular section underneath.
“This is the frog,” she said. “It’s like the life source. Every step pumps blood through the body.”
The students leaned in.
A few students got a chance to braid the tail of Tracy’s horse, Sunny. Others took turns brushing her coat. Some simply stood nearby, watching, absorbing.
For Shayla Hampton, 17, a junior in the WOW program who aspires to become a psychologist and own a ranch of her own one day, the connection came quickly.
“It’s kind of like therapy,” she said after mounting a horse and taking a slow circle inside the barn. “If you’re out there by yourself, you can think. You don’t always have to talk it out.”
She paused, then added: “The horse can feel how you feel.”
Roping, Rain, and Possibility
In the center of the barn, a bale of hay fitted with a metal cow head served as a stand-in for a calf. Under the guidance of Mike Latting, students took turns learning to rope cattle—awkward at first, then with growing confidence.
Somto Azubuike, 17, a BAM participant, landed a loop and broke into a grin.
“It was amazing,” he said. “First time doing it.”
He had come to Rodeo for Lives hoping to ride, but the weather had other plans. Still, the day delivered something else: exposure.
They learned that horses need new shoes every eight weeks. That grooming is not cosmetic but essential. That care requires attention, and attention requires patience.
Somto wants to be a pediatrician. Horses aren’t part of that path. But that wasn’t the point.
“Doing it,” he said, “just trying something new, that’s what made it good.”
A Legacy, Carried Forward
Rodeo, like many American traditions, carries a complicated and often overlooked history. Mike Latting made sure to name it.
Black, Latino, and Indigenous cowboys, he explained, have long been part of the sport’s foundation. He told the students about figures like Bill Pickett, a Black cowboy who pioneered steer wrestling in the early 20th century with his “bite-‘em down” technique, where he would leap from his horse, grab a steer by the horns, and bite its upper lip to force it to the ground. Their stories, often erased, still live in the techniques and traditions practiced today.
For Robert, an accomplished steer wrestler, his thick arms and thighs evidence of the work, the sport is also deeply personal.
On one of his horses rested a striking saddle—ornate, polished, distinct from the others. It’s in honor of his older brother, Earl “Tony” Hughes, a fellow cowboy and football player whose life was cut short in Chicago at just 24. While Robert was still a rising star at Notre Dame, he received the news in 2007 that Tony had been shot and killed, an act of violence that was never fully explained.
“Everything that I stand for today was because of my brother,” Hughes told the Chicago Tribune at the time. “He pushed me. He taught me everything I know.”
The loss still lingers. The saddle remains not just as a memorial, but as a reminder: of where he comes from, of who shaped him, and of the resilience he now tries to pass on.
Grief, like rodeo, is something you learn to carry.
“You’ve got to be able to handle adversity,” Robert told the students. “Being out here with the horses taught me that.”
The Work Beneath the Surface
By the end of the visit, the rain had not let up. But something else had shifted.
Mike Latting watched the students gather their things, with a perspective shaped by a lifetime in the saddle.
“I hope they understand,” he said, “there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. But nobody’s going to give it to you. You’ve got to work your butt off. Don’t ever quit.”
In other words: keep buckin’.
Blanche, reflecting on decades of watching her family and now a new generation around horses, put it more simply: “If you have the love, you’ll take care of it.”
It was a message that echoed the core values many of the students already practice in BAM and WOW: integrity, accountability, self-awareness, determination.
Different setting. Same lesson.
Out here in Crete, those values were not discussed in a BAM or WOW circle, the school-day group sessions where students sit together and reflect, they were lived. In the careful way a student approached a horse. In the patience it took to try, miss, and try again. In the pride that came from learning the history—and carrying forward the legacy—of those who came before them.
The Ride Back
As the students boarded the bus for the trip back to Chicago, their shoes a bit muddy, the ranch receded into the gray distance.
Some talked about the horses. Others about the roping. A few scrolled through photos on their phones—digital memories to match the real ones.
Not every student would return to a ranch. Not all would ride again.
But for a few hours on a rainy April day, they stepped into a different rhythm. One that asked them to slow down. To listen. To pay attention.
And maybe, as Tracy Latting had said at the start, to hear something speaking back.
This field trip was made possible by the Vivo Foundation, which funds the BAM and WOW programs at Noble Baker College Prep, and support from the Michigan State University Rodeo Club.