From Catching Baseballs to Riding Bucking Horses

Kade Sonnier brought a cowboy mentality to sports and an athlete’s mentality to rodeo

Imagine crouching down on a baseball field waiting for a ball to come at you at 90 plus miles per hour. 

You know it’s coming, but you don’t know if it’s a fast ball, a curve ball or if the batter is going to connect. There are a lot of split-second decisions in baseball and players depend on reactions. As a catcher playing baseball, Kade Sonnier found himself in that position more times than he could count. 

The Louisiana native played baseball and other sports most of his life, which prepared him for a career as a professional bareback rider. Sports have shaped him into the man and competitor he is today. 

His journey to becoming one of the best bareback riders in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association started like many competitors. His father competed and when Kade was a toddler, they would watch the NFR over and over. He would ride the arm of the couch during the rough stock events, run to the opposite arm and compete in the roping too. 

He rode sheep and started getting on steers. He also started participating in team sports – soccer, football, baseball – just being a kid. As he got older, life happened, and he had to make hard choices. Football and baseball became his passion. 

High school was defining for his baseball career. His coach, Mike Thibodeaux, treated his team like young men. He worked on making and keeping them mentally strong. He brought in Navy Seals, and they did mini versions of Hell Week. He put them through physical tests to challenge their mental capacity. 

“He taught us that when we get tired or feel like we can’t go anymore, we’ve only used 60 percent of our body’s energy,” Kade said. “He always let you know that you still had gas in the tank, even when you feel like you don’t. I use that today.” 

Under Coach Thibodeaux’s leadership, Kade’s high school baseball team won state 4-A championships in 2016 and 2017.  Kade got recognition as a catcher and was an outfielder. The next step was college. 

He signed with Nicholls State University and started playing Division 1 baseball for another Coach Thibodeaux, his high school coach’s brother. He dove for a ball in the outfield and dislocated his shoulder in March of 2018. He had surgery on his left – his catching – shoulder. A few months later he got released and was back. He was catching, threw a ball from behind the plate to second base and felt a pop in his elbow. He kept using it but knew something was wrong. He tore his UCL in his elbow and that required what is known as Tommy John surgery. He was recovering from that when his father, Joey Sonnier, competed at the 2018 NFR in saddle bronc riding. 

Kade still had school to keep up with and missed the first two rounds in Las Vegas because of finals. After he got there, he realized rodeo was calling him back. 

“When I got to go to the Thomas and Mack for eight nights, something special happened,” Kade said. “Every night during the National Anthem, I got real emotional. It lit a fire in my heart and reignited those dreams I had as a little boy when all I ever wanted to do was ride bucking horses and rope calves.”

He went back to school and through another turn of events, was offered a spot on the track team where he would keep his scholarship and continue his education. And that running helped him lose weight and get lean and strong so he could go get on bareback horses. 

Just over a year later, he went to McNeese State University located in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Justin Browning is the rodeo coach. The school is a member of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association and has opportunities for rodeo athletes. On March 11, 2020, two things impacted Kade’s future. He got on his very first bareback horse at McNeese and Rodeo Houston was cut short because of the pandemic. 

The bareback riding bug bit Kade, Justin offered him a scholarship, and he transferred to McNeese. He qualified for the College National Finals in 2022, finished 19^th, came back in 2023 and was the reserve champion. College rodeo was life changing outside of the arena as well. He met Sonora Schueneman and now they have a one-year-old daughter, Kalgary. 

He joined the PRCA in 2022, filled his permit and got his full membership in 2023. That led to his first NFR qualification where he placed in seven rounds earning $111,942 and finished the season in third place.

His 2024 season had a bit of a rocky start. In April, he was 20^th in the world standings, then sustained a spiral fracture to his thumb on his riding hand. He spent the next two months at home healing, staying in shape and spending time with the baby. 

He finished last year 22^nd in the world standings and with three of the busiest months left in the pro rodeo season, he is inside the top 30 now with the goal of being inside the famed yellow bucking chutes of the Thomas and Mack Arena. 

Is it all because of baseball? No. But baseball equates to bareback riding more than a person might initially think. Especially as a catcher, Kade learned about reflexes, and how to be mentally prepared to be among the best, time after time. 

“When your watching, baseball can be a very slow-moving game,” he explained. “But I think it’s one of the fastest sports as far as reaction time goes. And bareback riding is not far from it.

“I took what I like to call a ‘next-pitch mentality’ to the rodeo. If I get beat, so what? Next pitch. If I make an error, so what? Next pitch. In baseball, the ball is always going to find you,” he added. “In bareback riding if I spur over the neck, so what?  You can hold yourself accountable after the ride’s done, but you can’t think about it while it’s happening or you’re probably going to get your head slammed in the dirt. You have to react.” 

Kade brought the cowboy attitude to other sports he competed in and an athlete’s mentality to rodeo. 

“I always wanted to be tough. College sports taught me to take care of my body,” he said. “When I started rodeoing, I decided that I was going to make it a point to take care of my body better than I ever have.”

He also learned how to lose. 

“Baseball, just like rodeo is a very humbling sport,” he said. “It’s a game of failure. If you succeed three out of ten times in the sport of baseball, you’re doing something. If you win first at three out of the ten rodeos you go to, you’re going to have a lot of money won. We all hate losing more than we like winning. That comes with being competitive. And you have to be competitive to be successful.”

Kade has a long list of goals. At the top of that list is one that will serve him well in and out of the arena and it also comes from other sports. 

“Not everybody’s career goes exactly as they have planned,” he said. “You don’t always get to live this career as long as you want to. But if my career ended tomorrow, I just hope that at some point I left a positive impact on someone. I hope I left the sport better than I found it. The guys that came before us definitely did and I hope that we’re fortunate to be able to do the same.”