In fact, she didn't feel very well at all a couple of Friday mornings ago as a strange and scary pain in her abdomen literally doubled Sholty over.
Unfortunately, the 19-year-old Big Sky High School graduate was smack dab in the middle of a personal interview at the Miss Rodeo Montana pageant in Great Falls.
“It was like: Sit up straight. What are you doing?”
Not long thereafter, Sholty was lying in an ambulance on her way to the hospital.
A week later, doctors still aren't sure what caused the attack, though signs point toward her gall bladder. The intense pain lasted the better part of an hour before subsiding.
Sholty's immediate problem: The speech contest, one of the most important facets of the four-day contest, was imminent.
“I had my IV tube in and everything, and I was just sitting there in the emergency room crying, ‘I have 45 minutes till I have to give a speech.' And the doctors were saying, ‘Your health is more important right now.' ”
The story has a happy ending. The doctor was understanding. Sholty got back to the Hampton Inn in time.
And two days later, she was crowned Miss Rodeo Montana 2008.
The daughter of Jeff and Lynne Sholty became the first Missoula contestant to win the honor since Christina Boldt, another Big Sky High grad, did so in 1997.
Sholty succeeds Megan Hardy of Wolf Point, who was a Top 10 finisher at the Miss Rodeo America pageant in Las Vegas last month.
She made it a sweep of sorts for western Montanans in Great Falls last week. Jennifer Marshall of Victor, a senior at Corvallis High School, was named Miss Teen Rodeo Montana. Shantell Frame of St. Ignatius was first runner-up to Sholty.
Sholty and Marshall roomed together at the competition, during which virtually all communication with the outside world is removed.
“I hadn't met her until the pageant, but we became really good friends,” said Sholty. “She'll do a wonderful job.”
A lot of the time, Marshall will be working alongside Sholty.
“I'm sure I'll be able to travel with Jennifer a lot,” she said. “She can just come up here and jump in the truck and away we'll go.”
As Miss Rodeo Montana, Sholty becomes Montana's “First Lady of Rodeo” for a year. She'll attend rodeos, appear in parades and community events throughout the state, give any number of speeches and interviews, and coordinate kiddie rodeos.
“I'm so excited for this year I just can't wait,” Sholty said.
She got a taste of the routine two years ago, when she was named Miss Teen Rodeo. Sholty figures she went to roughly 25 rodeos in that capacity in 2006, and put 50,000 miles on her mother's truck.
Her horizons expand as Miss Rodeo Montana. Sholty's in-state mileage will increase, but she'll also represent Montana at rodeo- and agriculture-related events in South Dakota, Texas and Washington.
The capper, she hopes, will be a trip to Japan in October that the last three Miss Rodeo Montanas made with state delegations to promote the beef trade.
Sholty is planning to hold a fundraiser in Missoula on March 29 to help pay for her travels.
All the time she'll be pointing toward the national pageant in Las Vegas in December. It's an event no Miss Montana has ever won. One of the judges in Great Falls, Bobbi (Wirth) Levine, came closest in 1972 when she was first runner-up.
“I'll give it my best shot,” she vowed.
Sholty, who went to Target Range Grade School, took her first semester of college classes last fall at Montana Tech in Butte, where she's studying metallurgical and materials engineering.
She'll take the year off from school to perform her Miss Montana duties, and hopes to have time to work on her new hobby, team roping, which she took up a couple of summers ago.
Her roping horse is 19-year-old Bartender, a wizened quarter horse she bought from roper and former Missoula YMCA executive director Pat Dodson.
“He's been a perfect teacher,” she said of her sorrel gelding. “Thankfully, he knows what he's doing and knows where to go, because sometimes I don't.”
Sholty has had a horse to ride since she was 7, after qualifying in her parents' eyes by taking care of a rabbit for a year.
Horsemanship is one element of the rodeo queen contest, which also includes personal interviews, a style show and a three-minute public speech.
It's not a good idea to miss any of those events. Sholty's week had already had a rough start on Thursday, the first day of the pageant, when she was taken to the doctor with a sinus infection.
Then came Friday's drama.
“It was one of those things where, if it's a private interview, we can work around it,” said Jodi Rempel, a pageant organizer. “We'll schedule those later or whatever. But she couldn't miss an event. It was either be there or (get) a zero.
“I think she did everything to tell the doctors she had to be there. She made it, so it worked out very well.
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