Most of the roping world already knows: Sterlin English is on TV.
The kid John hauled to every little rodeo from Belen to wherever the next one was. The one who won the US Finals with his dad when he was 12. The same Sterlin who, last September, threw his hat in the air at the Lazy E before the run was even over because he knew he and Trey Southern were about to walk off with $172,000 in the Riata #12.5.
That Sterlin. The 24-year-old is playing cowboy Austin Lewis on Dutton Ranch, the Taylor Sheridan-produced Yellowstone spinoff that dropped its first two episodes on Paramount+ on May 15 and is out in its entirety now.
Of course he is. Who else was it going to be?
There aren’t many people who can do both. Team ropers don’t usually have Screen Actors Guild cards. Working actors don’t usually win the Riata #12.5. Sterlin has done both inside the last 12 months.
LISTEN: Sterlin English Trades the US Finals for The Dutton Ranch
The Call
Sterlin booked the role in August 2025. He and John were in Hobbs, New Mexico, putting on a roping. Sterlin was zip-tying banners and flagging for John. His little brother was there. His phone rang. It was his manager.
He hung up and told his dad. Then he went back to the banners.
“I’m definitely going to be a zip-tie-banner guy for the rest of my life,” Sterlin laughed. “I’m never going to not do that.”
What he didn’t know yet was that the next month was going to be the strangest stretch of his year. Maybe of his life.
The week before the Riata, he was already on set, working on Dutton Ranch. From there he flew back to New Mexico for Socorro. His flight got delayed. He landed at 11 p.m. Saturday, drove straight from Albuquerque to Socorro, and got on a horse John already had saddled. They were calling the #14.5 as he put his foot in the stirrup.
He missed six steers in a row.
“I literally wanted to quit,” he said. “I wanted to cut my head ropes up.”
It had rained that whole week. He hadn’t practiced, and he was in his own head. He drove to Brett Davis’s place on the way to the Riata and roped a couple sets there to find “it” again. Then he got to the Lazy E in Guthrie, roped with Miles Baker in the #14.5, came back from 30th call, and placed sixth for $34,800.
Then he came back and won the #12.5 with Trey Southern for $172,000 on Shiny Lil Peso, the 2019 palomino gelding by Shiners Suduko.
And he won the 6-and-under bonus on Peso, too—the same horse he rides throughout the Dutton Ranch series.
“One week you can’t catch one,” he said, “and then one week you can’t miss and everything just goes right.”
He went back to the set in Texas, and he didn’t go to Las Vegas in December for the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale because he was finishing filming Dutton Ranch—a sacrifice he made in 2025. He’s hopeful he will get to attend the 2026 Finale, but if Dutton Ranch calls, that’s his first priority.
READ: Sterlin English, Trey Southern Win $172K in 2025 Riata #12.5 Championships
The Road He Didn’t Take
Sterlin had a year that, 10 years ago, could have launched him down a path into ProRodeo. The win at The Patriot. The US Finals. The Riata #12.5. The (now) Open guys he grew up around have built whole careers on less.
But he’s not tempted to go rodeo anymore, not with all he’s got going on.
“I like to go jackpot. I like to go to the big ones,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how hard that lifestyle is. I mean, I’ve never done it. I’ve never tried to be out there on the road all year, but I’ve got a lot of friends who have and who have made the Finals. My dad rodeoed, and I don’t think the outside world really understands the type of commitment it takes. That has to be your whole life. You’re trying to beat the baddest 100 guys every weekend of every year, and it’s got to be tough. I know it is, because it’s a grind.”
John has been watching this calculation happen for years.
“He’s kind of made up his mind that he didn’t want to go down the road, and he doesn’t really like to travel a lot anyway,” John said. “He doesn’t mind going and working on these movies and being on location for a while. But the idea of getting in the truck and driving all night to run one and then getting back in the truck and driving all day to run another one—it’s just not enticing to him.”
“He likes the jackpot. He likes to go where he can rope in two or three ropings with his good partners, stay a day or two, and come home.”
Sterlin’s not closed off to ProRodeo forever. There’s a part of him, he said, that still wants to make the Finals once before he’s 30. But the version of his life where he chases that full-time isn’t the one he’s building.
“When I was younger, I always did want to make the Finals,” he said. “And then my mindset switched, and I wanted to do this.”
Most of the kid prodigies who came up around him picked one lane. They joined the PRCA and stayed there, or they burned out. Sterlin found a third option, mostly because Sheridan productions made one exist—a working roper can bank big at the jackpots, keep his horses working and still book roles on television. The rodeo road isn’t the only road anymore.
How Hollywood Found Sterlin English
The path to Dutton Ranch didn’t start with an audition. It started with a SeaWorld vacation.
Sterlin was a kid. John and the family were in California. They went to one of those stunt shows—jet skis, jumps, big splashes—and on the way out, Sterlin told his dad he wanted to be in that world. John thought he meant SeaWorld. Sterlin clarified: the acting world. The stunt world.
John knew exactly who to call. Chris Howell—a stunt coordinator and a close family friend with 30-plus years in the business. He picked up the phone.
“I told him, ‘Chris, I think Sterlin wants to be in the stunt world,’” John said. “He goes, ‘I don’t know, John. That’s a dark world.’ He said, ‘Y’all think about it. Call me back tomorrow.’”
John and Sterlin called him back the next day with Sterlin on the line.
“He said, ‘John, you realize this is a dark world,’” John said. “I said, ‘So is the team roping world, Chris. It’s no different.’”
Howell laughed. He said, “All right. Let’s do it.”
Howell started Sterlin in the stunt world and got him his SAG card. John had run Kiefer Sutherland’s ranch for a couple of years and worked on The Cowboy Way—connections that didn’t hurt. But it was Howell who eventually told Sterlin he had the look and the talent to move from stunts to acting.
Sterlin worked in the stunt business for a few years, refining his skills under the seasoned guidance of fellow team roper and stuntman Clint Roberts. He moved to California for a stretch and stayed with yet another team roper in the stunt world, Chad Dashnaw, while working a show with him. Then COVID hit. Sterlin came home to New Mexico. He started self-taping for auditions out of the house and booking small parts on smaller shows—a few episodes here, a few there.
Then his manager sent him the tape for Austin Lewis. He read for it. The callback came a few days later. He booked it.
On set, he was standing next to Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly, Annette Bening, Juan Pablo Raba, Ed Harris, Finn Little and Christina Voros—the show’s director of photography and the director of episodes 1, 2, 8 and 9. Sterlin doesn’t try to play cool about her.
“She’s just amazing,” he said. “She’s already one of the biggest directors in the world, but she’s going to stay on top for a long time because she is just that good at what she does.”
He approached the work the way he approached roping. He watches films and series the way he used to watch Junior Nogueira and Jade Corkill and Clay O’Brien Cooper, pulling apart what the best people in the room were doing and why. He took acting classes. He stayed close to the wranglers on set, Jason Owens and the team running the cowboy camps for actors to maintain the authentic feel of the show.
He’d been planning to propose to his girlfriend Jayden Utash in Central Park on the trip to New York for the premiere. The plan barely survived with a delayed Mother’s Day flight, a 1 a.m. arrival, a 10-minute couch nap that lasted 90, and a sprint through the airport in a cowboy hat and boots. He made the gate with seconds to spare.
They got to Central Park. He proposed. She said yes.
The premiere was the next night. Sterlin English, 24, of Belen, New Mexico, walking a red carpet in New York City—and the people asking for autographs probably didn’t know his name yet.
He signed them anyway.
What’s Next?
He’s home now, back in Belen. He’s roping. He’s planning a wedding for later this year—small, mostly family—because the end of the year is going to get busy. He wants to be at the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale in Las Vegas in December. He wants to be back at the Riata.
If Dutton Ranch gets a Season 2, he’s hopeful he’ll get the call.
“I just want to keep moving with this acting thing,” he said. “I’d love to do movies or other TV shows or whatever comes along, to be honest. I’m just trying to keep on this road and keep going.”
It’s not the road his dad drove up and down rodeoing. It’s not the one Jade and Clay and Junior built their careers on. It’s some third thing he and a small handful of working cowboys are figuring out as they go—SAG cards in one pocket, entry fees in the other, a Riata gelding in the trailer and a call sheet on the phone.
John doesn’t seem too worried about it.
“He’s done a great job,” he said. “He worked hard at getting where he wants to be. He waited on the right break. His manager got him the audition on this show, and one thing led to another. It worked out well.”
Then he added the line every roping kid’s dad has thought at least once but probably never says out loud: “It tickles me to death.”
Peso Goes to Set
The horse Sterlin won the Riata #12.5 on is the same horse he took to the set on Dutton Ranch.
The English family and the Eddy family, with help from Dean Tuftin, produced a futurity at Queen Creek over New Year’s a couple years back. John told Sterlin to look hard, because he thought it would be a good place to find a Riata horse. They watched the whole bunch go. Sterlin picked Peso out of all of them. Trainer (and NFR qualifier) Britt Williams, from Montana, was riding him.
John asked Britt if he’d sell.
They tried Peso the next day after the roping and bought him right there.
That was the horse—Shiny Lil Peso, the 2019 palomino gelding by Shiners Suduko, out of Layne Billadeau’s program—Sterlin won the Riata #12.5 on with Trey Southern in September for $172,000. It’s also the horse viewers will watch on screen on Dutton Ranch.
The same gelding the roping world watched Sterlin throw his hat over at the Lazy E is the same gelding showing up in the Yellowstone spinoff. Two careers. One horse.
—TRJ—