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Headin’ up the team

Local buckle-winning cowboy leads rodeo team at NCTC

READY FOR ACTION – Chance Walther (left) poses with his NCTC Rodeo team. Submitted photo

Chance Walther was destined to become a rodeo cowboy.

His family has been living and breathing the rodeo circuit for as long as he can remember. His father, Jamie Walther, competed in tie-down roping and team roping, and his mother, Laura Walther, tackled breakaway roping and barrel racing. His sisters, Paris and Ramey, followed in their mother’s footsteps, focusing on barrel racing and breakaway roping.

“It’s funny because it’s just kind of ingrained in me at this point,” Chance Walther recalled while sitting atop his horse, Chavez, in an arena at North Texas Central College in Gainesville Wednesday afternoon. “There are times where I fought it, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t fight it anymore. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is who I am.

“And everything about it, this whole lifestyle, I love it,” the 23-year-old Decatur High School graduate continued. “I love the competitiveness of it. I love being around it. Even if I’m not competing, I still love being around it because it’s home.”

A team roper and calf roper like his father, Walther is now passing on the family rodeo tradition to students at NCTC as the new rodeo team coach.

A native of Wise County, Walther has been competing on the rodeo circuit since he was 11 years old. But riding horses since before he could walk. His father always told him, “The cowboy way of life is a privilege that many want but won’t ever have, so it’s up to you to seize the moment every time you swing your leg over your horse.”

Walther followed his father’s advice and has been seizing the moment every chance he gets. He was seizing it when he was part of the rodeo team at Tarleton State University in Stephenville and when he won the tie-down roping event at the RE Josey World Championship, not just once but three times.

GOTCHA – Mackenzie Whitaker practices her calf roping skills at the NCTC rodeo arena in Gainesville. Messenger photo by Christian McPhate

This fall, Walther planned to return to Tarleton for his master’s degree in agriculture and consumer sciences when he landed the job as the NCTC rodeo team coach. He said it just kind of “fell into his lap,” and he packed his bags and moved from Stephenville to Gainesville.

“Something was calling me down here,” he said. “I’m sure glad it did. I for sure know this is where I’m supposed to be.”

The NCTC Rodeo program has been around since the ’80s and ’90s, participating in the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association rodeos. It ended in the late ’90s for unknown reasons and returned in the 2016-17 school year after Steve Keith, the chair of the agriculture department and a buckle-winning rodeo veteran, raised money and secured funding for the program, according to a May 14, 2017, North Texas Farm & Ranch article.

Six cowgirls and one cowboy make up the 2019-20 NCTC Rodeo Team. They include Cierra Faulkenberry, Cole Roberts, Dallie Carter, Josie Larson, Kylee Butts, Mackenzie Whitaker and Riley Caballero.

Larson, Roberts and Whitaker graduated from Decatur High School last year.

They all tackle different events. For example, on Wednesday, Whitaker was running her horse Salt through several calf roping exercises, and she tackled a goat a few times, practicing her goat-tying abilities for the goat-tie competition, which Larson pointed out requires a person to be quick.

“Fastest time wins,” Larson said. “Some of them are really fast. If you blink, you’ll miss it.”

Roberts doesn’t know how to calf rope, and he isn’t the kind of cowboy who tackles goats. Instead, he wrestles steers as part of the steer wrestling competition.

“It sucks when you’re a guy my size,” he said. “I should be a bull rider or maybe a bronc rider.” He’s never ridden a bull, but he did ride a bronc just for fun once.

The Rodeo team members were recruited last spring and received scholarships to attend NCTC, but you don’t have to major in agriculture to be on the team.

“If anybody wants to be on the team, they can as long as they want to practice and work hard to compete, you bet,” Walther said.

The competition is real and on the level of professional cowboying. They’re facing 13 other teams from places like Sul Ross in Alpine, Frank Phillips College in Canadian and Texas Tech in Lubbock. Walther’s alma mater, Tarleton State, is the team to beat. As “the rodeo school” in Texas, they are the best, and Walther said they don’t mess around.

“The kids are all doing well,” Walther said. “They’re learning as they go, and we’ve been going nonstop. They put the pressure on them every weekend. It’s a competitive region, and we’re going up against those bigger schools. But every single one of them (on the team) have been competing since high school. They are competitors.”

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