Holdenville Roundup Club

09/17/2026

Local legend born in none other than Wetumka, OK

His father was already a legend before Bobby Goodspeed ever entered his first junior rodeo. Instead of living in that shadow, he spent his career catching up to it — qualifying for the very first National Finals Rodeo ever held, then judging the sport for over thirty years after his own competing days ended.

Bobby Goodspeed was born in 1938 in Wetumka, Oklahoma, to Jess and Ella Goodspeed — surrounded by rodeo royalty from the very beginning. His father Jess was one of the greatest calf ropers of his era, winning the RCA Reserve National Championship in 1952, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and multiple AQHA World Championships on his way to his own National Rodeo Hall of Fame induction. Bobby's uncle Buck was a top steer roper in his own right, also enshrined in the National Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Then Bobby started proving the family name meant something in his own hands. He won the American Junior Rodeo Association All-Around and Calf Roping Championships three consecutive years, from 1954 through 1956, competing in Little Britches and high school rodeo before he'd even earned his professional card. He joined the RCA in 1958.

Then it took him just one year to reach the sport's biggest stage. Goodspeed qualified for the first-ever National Finals Rodeo, held in Dallas, Texas, in 1959 — part of the inaugural class that helped establish the event as rodeo's ultimate championship. He went on to qualify eleven more times throughout his career, competing at the NFR in 1962, 1963, 1967 through 1971, and 1974 through 1977, all held in Oklahoma City by then. He won twelve total rounds and placed thirty-five times across his career, banking $20,202 in career NFR earnings — and one of those seasons, he won the NFR average outright and finished tied for third in the final world standings.

Then he kept winning long after the Finals became routine. Goodspeed picked up victories at some of the PRCA's biggest rodeos, including Cheyenne, Denver, and Albuquerque, and captured six Great Lakes Circuit calf roping titles between 1975 and 1982, plus one all-around title in 1977. He kept competing at the circuit level well into his fifties, qualifying for his final Great Lakes Circuit Finals in 1996 at 58 years old.

Then, in 1978, he found a second calling inside the sport. Goodspeed became a PRCA judge, traveling to major rodeos across the country for more than thirty years, calling the sport as fairly as he'd once competed in it. He finally retired from judging at 82 years old — a career behind the chute lasting nearly as long as the one in front of it.

Inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2025, part of the 70th anniversary class. Then, in 2026, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame announced its own class, headlined by world champions Butch Myers and Jerome Davis — with Bobby Goodspeed's name right there among them, cementing a legacy that started the moment he was born into a family that already had one.

A father's legend to grow up under. A spot in the very first National Finals Rodeo. A thirty-year second career making sure the sport stayed fair for everyone who came after him. That's Bobby Goodspeed.

Bobby Goodspeed 🤠🪢🏆

09/06/2026

Jim Shoulders was born in Tulsa and raised in Henryetta, and he became the greatest rodeo cowboy who ever lived. That is not a regional claim or a matter of opinion — it is the consensus of the rodeo world across more than seventy years. Shoulders won 16 world rodeo championships between 1949 and 1959, a record that has never been matched. Five times he was named all-around world champion. Five times the bull riding world champion. Four times the ba****ck riding world champion. 🤠

He competed in an era when rodeo cowboys drove themselves from town to town across the country, sleeping in trucks, riding injured, and competing night after night on the sheer force of talent and pain tolerance. Shoulders was the best at it by a margin wide enough that he was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame as a charter member.

He was also a successful cattleman and horse breeder in Henryetta after his competing days, becoming one of the most respected figures in Oklahoma agriculture. The sport he dominated is still fundamental to Oklahoma culture, and Shoulders remains its undisputed greatest champion.

08/21/2026

Say a prayer for these 2 families.

On Friday, Wayne Paul West received the horse he had been dreaming about.

He was 13 years old. An Archer City Junior High student who spent every spare moment roping and working with his colts. He had a plan already mapped out. Texas Tech University. The rodeo team. An engineering degree. A life that looked exactly like the land he grew up on, only bigger.

On Saturday night, he was in a passenger seat of an ATV rolling through an open pasture in Archer County, Texas.

He died at United Regional Hospital in Wichita Falls from injuries sustained when the vehicle lost control and rolled.

Beside him that night was Kenlan Monroe Coleman. Twelve years old. Known to everyone who loved him as Scooter. A Windthorst student who spent his days on horseback, working cattle alongside his father, logging hours on ranches across Texas. His family described him as a boy who loved life and loved big, the kind of kid who threw himself into everything completely.

Kenlan was driving when the ATV rolled onto its right side in the pasture.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two boys. Two families. Two communities that revolved around horses and roping and the kind of childhood that gets built in the dirt and dust of North Texas ranching country.

The Archer County Rodeo remembered them as two of Archer County's finest cowboys, and in that community, there is no higher thing to be called.

Archer City ISD and Windthorst ISD both opened grief counseling. The schools are small. In towns like these, everybody knows everybody. Every student in both buildings knew Kenlan or Wayne Paul or both.

Wayne Paul's horse is still there.

The one he received Friday. The one he had been dreaming about. One day between receiving it and leaving everything behind.

There is nothing to say about that. Some things just sit there.

Please stop and say a prayer for Kenlan's family and for Wayne Paul's family tonight. Pray for the two other children who were in that ATV and came home. Pray for the coaches and teachers and rodeo families in Archer County carrying something this heavy.

Share this so Scooter and Wayne Paul are remembered far beyond Archer County.

Link in comments to read full story.

08/10/2026

He has drawn a paycheck every single month since 1947. He has never been fired. He has never collected unemployment. At 92 years old he still gets on a horse every single day. They call him a cowboy's cowboy. The word doesn't do him justice.

Born in 1932 in Clarendon Texas during the Great Depression, Billy Milton O'Neal got his nickname Boots before he was old enough to argue about it and wore it for the next nine decades without complaint. He grew up on the Texas Panhandle in a large family without modern conveniences — drawn more to horses and open country than to school from the time he was old enough to know the difference. He left formal education after ninth grade and went to work. He has never stopped.

At fifteen years old he started breaking horses for small ranches around Clarendon. By sixteen he had caught a ride to his first rodeo in Clarendon — spending three dollars on a hotel room and winning the bronc riding. He won the bronc riding there three times total. He won at Seymour and Stinnett too. He never competed big-time because ranch work ran seven days a week from daybreak until dark and a working cowboy does not ask for Saturdays off.

He went to Korea with the Army in the 1950s — staring out across foreign valleys wishing they were filled with a thousand steers and wondering why in the world they weren't. He came home and became a licensed peace officer and brand inspector hunting cattle thieves for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Then one day eating dinner at the wagon with ranch cowboys while inspecting cattle he looked around at the men and the horses and the open country and knew he had taken a wrong turn. He went back to cowboying.

His resume reads like a who's who of the greatest ranches in American history. The JA Ranch — living on the chuck wagon and sleeping in a bedroll for months at a stretch. The Matador. The Waggoner — twenty five years of it. The O RO and Babbitt in Arizona. And for the last nearly thirty years — the Four Sixes in Guthrie Texas. Six hundred and sixty six thousand acres of the most storied ranch land in the American West. Boots O'Neal has been their top hand for longer than most cowboys have been alive.

He has worked in blizzards and droughts and hundred degree heat and everything West Texas can throw at a man. He has broken more horses than he can count. He has roped calves and dragged them to the branding fire in the early morning light with the same quiet competence at ninety that he brought to it at sixteen. The veterinarians at the Four Sixes keep an eye on him now. The cowboys there call out Howdy Bootsy when his truck pulls up. He removed the headrests from his pickup so his cowboy hat would fit. Some things do not change.

He was awarded the Chester A. Reynolds Award at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2010. The Working Cowboy Award from the National Ranching Heritage Association in 2019 — the very first person to ever receive it. Inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2023. Inducted into the National Ranching Heritage Center Hall of Fame. The Four Sixes ranch itself — featured in the Yellowstone universe — has been his home and his purpose for nearly three decades.

He said it himself with the quiet certainty of a man who figured out the only thing that ever mattered — "I've had a job since 1949 drawing a check every month. I've never been fired and I've never drawn unemployment. But I always wanted to work. I don't hunt. I don't fish. I don't play golf."

Ninety two years old. Still horseback every day. Still dragging calves to the fire. Still the most authentically cowboy human being walking the face of the American West.

That is Boots O'Neal. 🤠🐴🏆

08/09/2026

HUGHES COUNTY HORSE SHOW AT THE FAIR!! This is our first horse show at the county fair! So excited about starting this event. Thank you so much to the Holdenville Round-up club for the use of the arena!
Please share this with everyone!!

08/08/2026

Good morning Rodeo Fans! 🤠

We have a new announcement about our contestants!!

Mason Taylor and Maverick Smith, two PBR superstars, will be riding tonight in Holdenville!! 💥💥

Hang on tight, we have a great show tonight!!

6pm gates are open, Bull Riding at 8pm. Adults $15 and Kids $5

Lets Rodeo! 🤠

Billy Moss