A one-woman show

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More than 70 hoofed, tramping feet send dust clouds wafting into the announcer's booth where Becky Seay keeps score at Andora Farm, coating her and everything in sight with a thin layer of dirt.

She looks like she spent months sunbathing in the Caribbean.
"Something's going on tonight," Becky says. "Must be a full moon."

Becky, 29, is the unofficial organizer at the weekly team-penning event at her father-in-law Tom Seay's farm on Route 3.

On this particular evening, everything seemed to be going awry. A cow jumped the fence and there was a snake sighting in the bathroom. The dust- Just another annoyance on the list.
Becky is one of a few familiar faces you won't see on a horse. She's never even tried team penning. Becky is the one in the background transporting cattle, gluing numbers on the backs of cows, collecting money, announcing, keeping time, all while watching her curious 5-year-old daughter Carly with mom eyes in the back of her head.
 
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If it is Friday at Andora, Becky is busy.

She can announce the next set of team penners over the loudspeaker and juggle simultaneous conversations - one with a visitor in the score booth and another on her cell phone.

"Hold on," she says to her cell phone friend. She uncovers the microphone with her hand and calls out the next three riders.

She resets the clock. When the buzzer signals, she gets 75 more seconds of conversation. It's boring otherwise, alone in the announcer booth.

Every few minutes she looks up and panicks.

"Where's Carly-"

Carly is everywhere - getting pony rides from the big kids, catching stray moths fluttering around the stadium lights and climbing up the gate to get a better view of the horses.

From the lonely, dimly lit announcer's booth, Becky's mom radar is on Carly at all times. She has a nagging fear in the back of her mind that a horse will kick Carly. But all Andora visitors adore the amiable youngster with bouncy blonde pigtails.

Somebody always knows where she is.

"She's our little mascot," Becky says. "Everybody loves her. She's become a little social butterfly."

Becky really relaxes on nights her husband Brian, a Spotsylvania County paramedic and firefighter, is off duty. She is more at ease knowing Carly is glued to his side for the night.
 
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Before Brian, whose father is Andora Farm owner Tom Seay, Becky was a sports medicine major at Radford University and a self-proclaimed workaholic.

She had never even ridden a horse before meeting him, but everything changed when they married. Now she's got an arsenal of tales that includes wrangling herds and being kicked and charged.

"There are days I wonder why I'm walking through horse manure," Becky says.

Shortly after Carly was born, she was forced up the rickety wooden ladder and under the heated lamp in the announcer's booth.

"I said I didn't really want to because I didn't like to talk into a microphone," she says.

"Everyone else was busy," Brian explained.

It turned out to be the new mom's welcome reprieve from being cooped in the house all week.

From there, Becky's role at Andora Farm snowballed. She slowly took on more and more tasks until she became a one-woman show. She constantly rifles through mental checklists of tasks that keep the event running smoothly, like fixing the fence when a board is down, ensuring the gates are hung properly or trimming the grass.

Becky and Brian had a second child this summer, and Becky continued working Fridays through the end of her pregnancy. Now the couple is finishing construction on a log house on the same property. She's been seen much less these days.
 
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A rider in the pen hollers for Becky's attention.

Another cloud of dust blankets Becky's face. She tastes the bitterness of dirt in her mouth and can barely see who is calling her, trying to tell her something.

"What-" she yells.

Great. A light bulb in the timer burnt out.

"I've got to put that on my list of things to do," she says.

"Must be a full moon."

Katie Dolac can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or kdolac@starexponent.com.