Arena Tracks: Generations of Success

As did many South and North Dakota residents, I tuned into the 2025 NFL Draft for only one reason: to see where Grey Zabel would take the field in the next stage of his football career.  The Pierre, South Dakota native and NDSU graduate had stunned scouts at both the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine with his versatility, endurance, grit and ability to play a variety of positions on the offensive line.  As Grey was drafted 18th in the 1st Round of the draft by the Seattle Seahawks, I thought of his mother, Tanna Negaard Zabel, and what a force she was in many arenas as a young cowgirl and athlete.  She was a competitor and idol of mine and had you told me 40 years ago that her son would be drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft, I would have said, “Yeah.  That tracks.”  Athletes like Grey don’t just spring up out of the dirt.  They come from generations of goal oriented people who know the value of a hard day’s work.

South Dakota is a land of legends.  From Casey Tibbs to Tom Brokaw to the four faces that anchor Mount Rushmore, the Sunshine State has melded hardy pioneer genetics with a dash of geographic and meteorologic adversity to form people who are tough and resilient, a rarity in today’s world. Harding County in particular, seems to produce a population of the finest kind of folks.  It’s from Buffalo, South Dakota that my friend Tanna Negaard Zabel hails.  Handy but humble, charismatic and kind, Tanna is truly a South Dakota legend.

Tanna Negaard Zabel was raised in one of South Dakota’s great rodeo families.  Gary Gilbert and Sherry (Gilbert) Negaard grew up north of Buffalo, South Dakota and as only siblings were very close.  Sherry met and married Norman Negaard, also a Buffalo boy, and after a few years teaching in Sturgis, the two purchased Buffalo Hardware and Lumber and moved home.  There they raised their two children, Tanna and Birch.  

The Negaards and Gilberts operated as one family and Birch Negaard assures me they still do.  The summers were spent on the Gilbert ranch 40 miles north of Buffalo, so close to the North Dakota border you could sense the change in latitude.  All of the kids – Pine, Denver and Matt Gilbert along with Tanna and Birch Negaard would spend their days horseback working on the ranch.  In the winter time, the crew would move into town to the Negaards’ “inner city Buffalo” residence where they had access to education and activities without an 80 mile round trip drive.  Tanna loved her life in the middle of this large, extended family and tells of their travels to rodeos as a group.  With Pine six years older and off to bigger things, the rodeo rig tended to haul Gary, Phyllis, Denver and Matt Gilbert, Norman, Sherry, Tanna and Birch Negaard as well as all the paraphernalia that rodeo entailed.  The Gilberts had a big stock trailer at the ranch and the couples took turns pulling it with their four door dually pickups. Even with the crew cab, hauling eight passengers was tight and the trailer was packed just as densely with horses tied nose to tail to make everything fit. Tanna paints a picture of them pulling into a rodeo grounds and people and horses and tack and coolers practically exploding out of that rig in not-quite-organized chaos before they took to the arena.  One time Tanna asked her father, Norman, about the money he and Sherry had poured into rodeo.  He replied, “I don’t want one cent back.  I loved every minute of it.”

I can’t help but think of the championship trophies, buckles and saddles that old stock trailer hauled home with those competitive cowboys and cowgirl.  As the saying goes, “Steel sharpens steel” and the daily competition amongst themselves created a group of hands.  The Gilberts and Negaards were strong believers in practice and the cousins weren’t allowed to just pop out of bed and load the horses for a rodeo.  They put in the hours in the arena and made sure the horses and stock were fed before they themselves ate, even when chores involved Tanna and Birch riding a moped the couple miles out of town long before they were old enough to drive.  “Rodeo kids just learn a higher level of responsibility at a younger age,” Tanna commented.  The circumstances into which Tanna was born surely created the competitor she became.

While in youth rodeo, Tanna was an outstanding five or six event threat.  To give you an idea of her versatility, she qualified for the National High School Rodeo all four years of high school in four different events. In her Senior year of high school, she was both the SDHSRA and South Dakota 4H Rodeo Senior All Around Champion.  Tanna did all of this with one good horse, Twist (King Gold Twist), a prospect purchased at a Rex Burgduff sale.  Rex’s daughter Bunny had put 30 days of breakaway roping and barrel training on Twist before Tanna loaded him into her trailer and took him home.  Tanna and Twist clicked and the horse soon was considered a member of the family.  At times, he would compete in all of Tanna’s events as well as haze for Birch and Denver in the steer wrestling.  The gritty little bay gelding was only ten or eleven when Tanna graduated from high school and Norman suggested that, perhaps, they should sell Twist so another cowgirl could get her start on him.  Tanna and her mother, Sherry were dumbstruck.  After all that Twist had done for Tanna, he would live out his days and die in her pasture. Norman, being a man of good sense, never mentioned it again. When Twist did pass on, it took Norman two weeks to work up the courage to tell Tanna as he knew how much the loss would break her heart.  I once read a quote that went something like, “There are people who love horses and there are people that love what horses can do for them.”  Tanna Negaard loves horses.  

While Tanna was an outstanding cowgirl, she was also a stellar athlete and was recruited to play basketball at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  In high school she scored a whopping 2,132 points and was an All-Conference standout for the NSU Wolves. Additionally, Tanna ran hurdles at Northern State during her first year of college before an ACL injury.  As a college athlete, she had little time for rodeo but continued to compete at SDRA events in the summer. Birch and Denver met her at the rodeos with Twist in tow.  Eventually, Tanna moved to Pierre to take a job with the State of South Dakota and the arrangement just wasn’t working.  She had been raised with the understanding that practice was non-negotiable and she had nowhere to keep Twist, let alone put in quality arena time.  And with that, rodeo began to fade from her life.  For years after, the only rodeo Tanna attended was the NFR and only then because her brother was competing.  It broke her heart to know that the rodeo part of her life was in the past.  When I asked Tanna what she liked most about rodeos, she said, “At the time, the competition.  Now I realize the value of the friendships that I made.  Even the friendships my parents made are important to me.” 

Tanna married Mark Zabel in 1995 and together they raised three sons in Pierre: Peyton, Grey and Jett, all multi-sport athletes. Tanna’s rodeo background influenced her parenting through her recognition of the power of practice.  That time in the arena bled over into every other aspect of her life and she raised her boys on the same philosophy – to prepare through repetition until the actions are second nature. Mark, also a Northern State athlete, was in the same mindset, because boy did they raise some stellar athletes.  

Now Tanna and Mark’s boys are grown and spread around the country, all still involved in athletics in one way or another. The couple plans to travel and follow their teams, enjoying the fruits of their parenting as they watch their boys shine in their own separate ways.  If Tanna runs out of things to do, she thought she might set up a little stand by the boat launch in Pierre charging $10 to back boat trailers in for the fisherman.  After all, backing up trailers is one of the many skills she mastered growing up a cowgirl in northwest South Dakota.