Brooke Ann Coats Memorial Bull Ride Tonight in Greater Brandon (March 26)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Coverage of the Benefit Bull Ride for Brooke Ann Coats is coming soon. Please check back again.

Kassy Leasure of Brandon has come to terms with the death of a friend who rode her last rodeo on the back of a bull at the Crosstown Rodeo Arena in Greater Brandon.

“She was very determined and very passionate about bull riding,” Leasure said about Brooke Ann Coats, who died following a Feb. 18 bull-riding accident. “She was a very nice person, a good person to be around.”

Indeed, Coats was a well-liked honor student and athlete at Riverview High School, as evidenced by the outpouring of grief and support that followed her untimely death.

The Benefit Bull Ride for Brooke Ann Coats is scheduled for March 26 at 7 p.m. at the Crosstown Rodeo Arena. Proceeds will benefit the Coats family. Memorial T-shirts and a raffle are scheduled for the event as well. The arena is on U.S. Highway 301 South, just north of the Crosstown Expressway.

Leasure, 20, said she keeps her horse at the Brandon arena and has been going there “ever since high school, and even more over the past two years, for the weekend rodeos,” which are held every other Friday.

The 20-year-old saw Coats the night of her ill-fated ride, but had left before the accident occurred. Coats died in surgery Feb. 18 at Tampa General Hospital after walking away from the bull-riding accident some 90 minutes earlier.

“One of the bull riders called me at 2 in the morning to let me know,” Leasure said. “I was just heart-broken and shocked."

A makeshift memorial stands at the entranceway to the arena and Facebook pages in Coats’ memory are filled with new posts every day. It seems that a community, and not just her family and friends, attended the memorials and funeral in the days following Coats’ death.

“I’m at peace now, I think a lot of us, as much as you can be,” Leasure said. “After getting over the initial shock, we know she died doing something she was very passionate about.”

Still, and for always, “we think about her a lot,” Leasure said. “I see her cross [at the arena entrance] and think about her a little bit every day."

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