Cowboy Christmas couldn’t have come at a better time for 2026’s team roping high-money earners Cody Snow and Lane Mitchell.
Snow and Mitchell raked in $30,192 a man over 10 rodeos during the week of the Fourth of July to lead the team roping field over one of rodeo’s most significant weeks. And while the bragging rights motivate teams year after year, it was more about the opportunity to reset their season for Snow and Mitchell.
“We both had a slow winter, and then the spring wasn’t much better,” Mitchell, a 2025 NFR heeler, admitted. “So, we didn’t leave the house with very much money. It was just time for us to have a big week. We needed it, and we were happy to have it. I guess our mentality on it was to try to get the best runs everywhere we could; even if it was more traveling, that was fine because we were in a situation where we had to have a big week, so it’s just part of it.”
Heading into the Fourth run, Snow and Mitchell sat outside the Top 15 at No. 38 and No. 40 with $29,040.75 and $26,337.70, respectively. When Cowboy Christmas came to an end July 5, they were No. 13 and No. 15 with $59,233.17 and $56,530.12.
While recognizing Cowboy Christmas could be the week to change the trajectory of their season, they also saw it as an opportunity to build out their relatively new run after partnering up this spring.
“Lane and I just started roping, so we’ve just kind of been trying to catch steers together,” said eight-time NFR header Snow. “That was kind of our plan through Greeley and through these last couple of weeks to just kind of see what our run is. And that’s the game plan we went with over the Fourth. We need a lot of tour points, so our goal was just to get a lot of times and see where we end up, and it ended up working pretty good.”
Cowboy Christmas craziness
Their $30,192-a-man week embodied the spirit of Cowboy Christmas with all-night drives, tight turnarounds and the occasional airfare.
“It was all night, all day,” Mitchell said with a laugh. “As soon as it started, it was full contact. I think the earliest we pulled up to a rodeo was an hour and a half before. It was hectic.”
Snow and Mitchell kicked off their Cowboy Christmas at the Greeley Stampede winning seventh in the second round with a 5.3 for $966 before heading to Alberta’s Ponoka Stampede. From there, the real chaos began.
“We drove all night to Mandan (North Dakota) and barely made it,” Mitchell explained. “I don’t think we were even supposed to make it; we got hung up at the border for two and a half hours. Then we were also up at Prescott (Arizona), so we had to get the rodeo back—conflict that—and then we had to fly to the Greeley short round. From the Greeley short round, we drove all night to Red Lodge (Montana), and then as soon as we roped there, we drove all day to Oakley (City, Utah). From Oakley we drove all night to Basin City (Washington), and then we hurried over to St. Paul (Oregon). Then we went to Molalla (Oregon) and hurried back for the second one at St. Paul. We drove 16 hours all night and all day back to Cody (Wyoming). As soon as we roped there, we got to Livingston (Montana) as fast as we could.”
While they didn’t spend much time in the sky, having help on the road made all the difference.
“What helped us the most is having people help us out here,” Snow said. “I had a good buddy of mine helping me drive and he was with one of my rigs, and Lane had another one of his buddies driving his rig. So that helped us lay it out. We were driving every night, so from 2 o’clock to 7 a.m., somebody else could drive that wasn’t competing which helped us a lot when we showed up, I thought. It’s hard to do all the rodeos that week and get the best runs you can at the rodeos without having all night drives. And then at Livingston and Killdeer—two of our biggest rodeos—we weren’t just completely tired at them.”
The occasional rest was worth it for their bank accounts. Snow and Mitchell walked away from Greeley second in the average for $7,410 a man. They won the Mandan Rodeo Days with a 4.4-second run for $5,136 apiece. They won seventh out of Red Lodge’s Home of Champions Rodeo with a 4.9 for $1,607 apiece, the Oakley Independence Day Rodeo with a 5.0 for $3,512 a man and the Cody Stampede Rodeo with a 4.7 for $3,411 a man. But their biggest hit came from the St. Paul Rodeo where they won third in the second round with a 4.7 and third in the average with an 11.4 on two for $9,116 apiece.
St. Paul has been good to Mitchell in the past, too. Though 2026 was without a doubt his best Cowboy Christmas ever, he took the St. Paul win in 2024.
“The average was super easy, so we knew that we just needed to stop the clock and get what we can because before this week, we were behind on money and we were behind on Tour points,” Mitchell said. “So that was our big goal, catch the steers, stop the clock everywhere we go and they’re going to let us win what we win and we’re going to get Tour points. We drew a strong one on the first one—we knew it. We’re like, ‘Hey, we’re just going to go catch the steer and then hopefully we get a loper. And if we don’t, that’s part of it.’ Well, we come back and they did give us the loper, and then we were like, ‘Alright, well, let’s use him. Here’s our Chance.'”
Just as important as surviving the travel was making the most of the opportunities they were given. Their draws might have caused more miles to be traveled, but it allowed them to rope in performances with slight advantage.
“I mean, Mandan Slack’s a good time to go,” Mitchell said. “Cody and Livingston was at the end of the week and we had to drive a long ways to it, but we were fine with it because we were the last day at both of them. We went at the end, or not the end, but far enough down at St. Paul where we knew what we had to do, and then it wasn’t too bad really. I mean, these guys beat them up in the last perfs everywhere, so I think entering was a big deal this week, trying to get the best runs you can and deal with the travel plans.”
Of course, none of it would have mattered without making good runs.
“Lane caught them all by two feet, so that helps a lot,” Snow said. “We were long on the first one at St. Paul, but we didn’t give up and it gave us a chance on the second one. We came back and we were 4.7 and that was a $9,000 steer right there. So, for us just to stay hooked, I think that was the biggest deal over the week is if we didn’t get a good go or it didn’t feel right, go one more and get a time. That’s why I felt like we had a lot of confidence catching steers the whole time. I think that was the difference. I think we caught the most steers I’ve caught over the fourth in a long time.”
Mitchell also recognized how strong Snow’s roping was all week.
“Cody headed great,” Mitchell said. “I think he missed one steer all week. That’s unbelievable. Heading and taking a lot of risky throws that are initially high-percent shots and just doing his job over and over and over. So, it’s nice to follow.”
High-intensity horsepower
On the head side, Snow primarily called on SJR Diamond Billy, a standout 2018 son of CD Diamond Snow rode at the 2024 NFR. For Greeley and one run at St. Paul, Snow switched to Cowboy Sangria, aka “B1.” The 2017 gelding came from fellow NFR header Brenten Hall just a few months ago and has proven his star power, helping Hall win the 2024 Ellensburg Rodeo as well as the 2025 BFI for two-time World Champion Kaleb Driggers.
“I rode B1 that I got from Brenten Hall at Greeley, and I rode him in the first round of St. Paul because our steer hadn’t been caught yet and he runs really hard,” Snow said. “So, he’s kind of my long-start horse, and I just kind of pulled him in when I felt like I need to be on that horse.”
Mitchell rode 11-year-old stallion Oz Ona Hot Streak on all but one run, climbing aboard his sorrel “Chop”—whom he bought from Logan Moore over the winter—at Greeley.
“[Oz] is tough, and he’s fast,” Mitchell said. “He’s good, and I have a lot of confidence on him. I mean, that horse has done everything for me. So that’s a really, really good horse, and I got a lot of confidence in him and I know he’s going to help me when he can. I think something about being a stud, they’re tougher and they got more in the tank than most horses. That horse has been a blessing to me and my family and everyone involved. It was almost a God thing with that horse, that I got the opportunity to ride that horse.”
On a roll
The Mitchell family had plenty to celebrate by week’s end, too. His wife, Jordi, also had a killer Cowboy Christmas, winning $21,537 to finish as The Breakaway Roping Journal’s No. 2 money earner for the week.
“She might be roping better than she ever has,” Mitchell said. “It’s nice, obviously, as a family it was a huge week for us last week. It’s really cool that we get to do it as a family and we’re both involved in it and we’re both on each other’s team. We’ve got our little boy out here, Brooks, and it’s fun all the way around. We’re not competing against each other, but it keeps us competitive; it keeps our minds on it. We’re always building each other up and we’re both wanting to win, so our minds are on it. I was very proud of her.”
After months of playing catch-up, Snow and Mitchell aren’t looking to change much heading into the rest of July.
“We’re just going to stay after it and try to keep the same mentality and hope it keeps working,” Mitchell said. “But this week was huge just to get caught up and then feel like, alright, now we just keep winning. Where if you don’t have a big week right here, you just start to feel behind. So, now we’re in the mix of it and I think it’ll be good.”