ONCE upon a time April Hanby-Zilverberg fell in love with a cowboy, moved to the US and started competing on the rodeo circuit.

Last week the former Oakdale resident, who now lives in South Dakota, was back in Sydney for a brief visit.

In December 2008, Hanby-Zilverberg won the Rookie of the World in the Women's Professional Rodeo Association for team roping heeling and she has just competed in the Minnesota rodeo finals.

``I won a round in the team roping, which was aired on TV numerous times over the US and I became known as the Aussie redhead with the white horse who could rope,'' Hanby-Zilverberg said.

She grew up in Oakdale and attended Camden High School. Hanby-Zilverberg was a Wollondilly youth development officer between 1982 and 1992 and worked for Macarthur Disability Services in 1995.

She first went to the United States to study sports science on exchange and met and married a South Dakotan. They lived in Oakdale for nine years,

In 2007, Hanby-Zilverberg was told that her mother Lorraine had pancreatic cancer.

She spent the last two months of her mother's life with her and was told to win a world title in the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association Circuit, which she did before her mother died in January 2008.

Team roping began when cattle needed to be doctored and branded.

One cowboy would rope the horns and the other would rope the back legs before laying the animal down to give an injection or mark it.

In the rodeo event, a steer comes out of a chute with a head start and a team of two ride either side to catch up and rope it by the horns and back legs.

On November 9 to 14, Hanby-Zilverberg will compete in the team-roping competition and the women's tie-down roping in the Women's Professional Rodeo Association World Championship finals in Tulsa, Oklahoma.