Farrow on a roll at UW

Three events into the fall season, Greybull’s Colton Farrow has already emerged as one of the leaders of the University of Wyoming rodeo team.

A bareback rider, he won his first Central Rocky Mountain Region (CRMR) title at the Chadron State College rodeo in early September and followed that up with another win at the  Central Wyoming College (CWC) rodeo in Riverton and a second-place finish at last weekend’s Sheridan College rodeo.

Farrow started rodeoing at the age of 16. He tells of hearing one of his father’s employees talking about wanting to get back into rodeoing and his father respond he had an old bareback riding rig that he used a couple times competing in Utah.

“A week later, I was getting on my first horse,” he said.

He’s now a senior at UW, where all signs are pointing up for him and his rodeo teammates. The Cowboys took first at all three rodeos; the Cowgirls are faring well too, winning once and twice placing second.

For Farrow, it’s been a quite a roller coaster.  By his own admission, he did not perform well at last summer’s College National Finals Rodeo, where he finished 26th out of 33 competitors.  But he kept at it and started seeing better results.

“I’m not sure what changed, I just started going to pro rodeos and getting on stronger horses and gaining in confidence,” he said. “Just about every weekend, I’d end up at a pro rodeo in Wyoming or Colorado.”

With two wins in his first three tries this fall, he now feels like everything is coming together.

“In rodeo, so much of it is just confidence,” he said. “Nothing has changed physically or how I’ve been training.”  A week in his life during the season includes two early-morning strength-training sessions at the High Altitude Performance Center in Laramie and lots of practice on a bucking machine.  “We buck horses on Wednesdays,” he said.

The fall season ends the weekend of Oct. 18-20 in Lamar, Colo.  Competition will resume toward the end of the spring semester and extend into the summer. 

Farrow said his goals are to win the region, qualify for the CNFR and “do my job on my horses as good as I can because it does end up being a drawing costs when you have that many good bareback riders and you’re only getting four horses.”

Farrow is a senior studying architectural engineering.  When he graduates, he plans to work for his dad and “rodeo as hard as (he) can” for a few years.  “Eventually I’ll get a job, get my own PE stamp — you have to work under someone for four years to do that — and hopefully start my own business somewhere in the Big Horn Basin or around Sheridan.”

Looking back on it now, he attributes his success to his CNFR experience, saying, “It definitely made me hungrier.”