MYRTLE POINT — Olivia Train can’t recall the first time she rode a horse.

So for all intents and purposes, the 17-year-old Myrtle Point High School senior might as well have been born in the saddle; she can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t riding.

“I can’t even remember when I started riding,” Olivia said Wednesday after working out one of her horses, Skeeter, at her family’s ranch outside Myrtle Point. “So it’s always felt pretty natural.”

Olivia’s father, Jeff Train, said she first took the saddle around age 3, and that lifelong love of riding led to competition by the age of 8, as the young Olivia took to tearing around barrels in arenas and roping calves. She spends six days a week practicing, and now all the hard work is paying off. Last week she placed seventh in the country in breakaway roping at the National High School Rodeo Association Finals in Farmington, N.M., with a 2.824-second roping in the championship round Saturday.

“That was pretty intense. If I’d missed, I wouldn’t have gotten anything,” Olivia said of her final roping. “I got out of the arena and I was shaking. When you’re roping, you don’t feel the adrenaline. But after you’re done you do.”

Olivia is collecting a hoard of  fancy saddles and belt buckles given as prizes at various rodeos. Wednesday she rode Skeeter on a Northwest Youth Rodeo Association saddle, a memento of a past title.

“She surpassed anything I could teach her years ago,” Jeff Train said. “From a pretty early age, she excelled. She just really wanted it. She worked hard at it.”

Olivia earned a spot at the massive New Mexico rodeo after she won the barrel racing and breakaway roping competitions at the Oregon high school rodeo finals in Prineville in June. At that competition, she was named 2009 all-around girls champion for her performances in six events.

After the 3,000-mile round-trip trek to the Southwest last week, Olivia plans to compete in barrel racing at the Coos County Rodeo on Friday night.

Life on the road has taken some getting used to for the Train family, but Olivia appears to worry more about the well-being of her horses. 

“Poor guy,” she said, stroking Skeeter after working him out Wednesday. “He deserves a break.”

Both Skeeter and Olivia’s other horse, a female named Jazzy, have been getting star treatment this week in preparation for a long weekend; after the Coos County Rodeo Friday, the Train family — human and equestrian — plan to travel to rodeos in Newport on Saturday and Central Point on Sunday.

It’s a lot of time and effort spent on an activity, especially for a teenager, but for Olivia competitive riding is no childhood phase. She’s hoping to take her skills in the saddle — along with a straight “A” grade-point-average — and earn a rodeo scholarship to either the University of Nevada Las Vegas or New Mexico State.

“It’s going to be kind of a lifelong thing,” she said.

Olivia’s parents, Jeff and Tracy, would like that.

“Hopefully between her grades and rodeo, I won’t have to pay for anything,” Jeff Train said with a laugh.

That’d be nice for the Train family, since the clan has sunk so much money into Olivia’s competitive riding — care for the horses, entry fees and traveling expenses add up fast.

For the cost of years of competition, the Train family “could have sent her to Harvard,” Jeff Train joked.

But the Trains wouldn’t have it any other way. Olivia was born to ride, and her competitive nature has led her straight to rodeo.

“If it’s worth doing, I want to win at it,” she said. “(Riding) is independent, it’s my own thing. It kind of makes you feel free.”