07/27/2026
❤️Tayla Moeykens❤️
She was the valedictorian of her high school class. She led Montana State to a national championship. She won Pendleton. Then she walked into her first NFR ranked tenth in the world — and the Montana cowgirl showed Las Vegas exactly who she was.
Born and raised in Three Forks Montana — a small community where the Jefferson Madison and Gallatin rivers join to form the Missouri — Tayla Moeykens grew up with barrel racing as her first language. Her mother Deena is an accomplished barrel racer and WPRA member. Her father Rick helped raise and train horses alongside her from the very beginning. Rodeo was not something Tayla discovered. It was something she was born into and never once tried to escape.
She was the valedictorian of her graduating class at Three Forks High School — the kind of student athletes who bring the same discipline and focus to academics that they bring to competition. She enrolled at Montana State University on a rodeo scholarship and immediately started building a college career that put her name in the record books.
As a sophomore in 2021 she rode a mare named Dash of Blue Sky — a horse the family had taken in as a favor when Tayla was thirteen and that had never once been entered in competition before — all the way to the College National Finals Rodeo championship. The first barrel racer in Montana State University history to ever win that title. She led the Bobcats to the women's national team championship that same year. Then she came back as a junior and senior and won back to back CNFR Reserve National Championships in 2023 and 2024 — leaving Bozeman with one of the most decorated college rodeo careers Montana had ever seen.
Her horse Lizard — named because he was born with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth — was raised and trained entirely by her family on their ranch outside Three Forks. He led the Montana State football team onto the field during ESPN's GameDay pregame show in front of a national audience. She said there was nothing quite like the noise the lights the fire and the fans.
In 2025 she won the Pendleton Round-Up — one of the most prestigious barrel racing titles in the sport — edging out nineteen time NFR qualifier Lisa Lockhart by less than a tenth of a second in the first round. Then she kept winning across the summer. Over $37,000 in August alone. $20,000 more in September. Then Sioux Falls South Dakota — the last rodeo that locked up her spot in the top fifteen. Twenty three years of dreaming. One confirmation.
She was headed to Las Vegas.
At the 2025 NFR the sport faced a major equine herpesvirus outbreak just before the Finals began. Tayla and her horses had been exposed at jackpots weeks earlier. She and her team made hard decisions under impossible pressure — navigating health protocols while preparing to compete on the biggest stage of her life. She rode multiple horses across ten nights the way only a cowgirl raised on Montana ranch horses can — staying calm, staying focused, making her best run every single night.
She said it with the quiet certainty of a Three Forks girl who understood exactly where she came from — "I want everyone at their best so I can be at my best. Iron sharpens iron."
A valedictorian. A national champion. A Pendleton title. A Montana horse named Lizard. A first NFR at twenty three years old.
That is Tayla Moeykens. 🤠🎀🏆
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