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Kolton Schmidt, a Barrhead native and full-time team roper who hails from a local rodeo family, recently won first place at a prestigious rodeo event called the Bob Feist Invitational (BFI), which was held in late June at Reno, Nevada.
According to the BFI Reno Open Championship results website, Kolton and his partner Wyatt Cox roped six head in 40.27 seconds to win the BFI and earn a prize of $100,000.
“It was a good day. I was pretty happy,” said Kolton, in an interview on July 21.
Kolton, 27, is the grandson of Leonard Schmidt, a well-known team roper who lived in the Barrhead area. His father and his brothers are also involved in the sport.
Kolton said he has been team roping for most of his life, noting that he entered his first amateur finals when he was 12 years old.
“That’s all I really ever knew, and that’s all I ever wanted to do,” he said.
Nowadays, Kolton is a professional team roper and spends much of his time attending rodeos and competitions throughout the U.S. and occasionally Canada.
Even COVID-19 did not slow him down, as he competed throughout 2020 and in 2021.
Kolton said the BFI is one of the largest team roping events in all of North America. He actually competed there in 2019, but wasn’t as successful as he was this year.
The difference may lie in the fact that Kolton was working with a new partner this year. According to an online publication called the Team Roping Journal, Cox and partner Cory Clark had the fastest time of the entire 2020 BFI, even though they didn’t win the event.
Noting that team ropers choose their partners instead of, say, being slotted together by the association, Kolton said he partnered with Cox because they thought they would work well together.
“It’s our livelihood. It’s our business. So you want to make sure you have the right guy with you,” he said.
While the two have not had a bad year, Kolton said their win at the BFI was definitely their biggest victory of 2021.
