Clay Tryan and Ty Arnold may not have roped together in 2025, but they both walked out of the Texas Circuit Finals Oct. 10, as the year-end champions.
Three-time World Champion Tryan entered Waco with the lead in the circuit and held on to the No. 1 spot until the end, finishing the year with $30,558.74 won. Arnold, on the other hand, came into the Finals No. 3 on the heel side and needed to win to have a chance. He did just what he needed to and ended the year with $24,370.78 in earnings
Working Backward
Despite 20 NFR qualifications and over $3 million in ProRodeo earnings, a year-end circuit title had eluded Tryan.
“I’ve never won any circuit, ever,” he explained. “I won my first amateur title at 45 and my first circuit at 46. I’m living life backward, I guess.”
Tryan teamed up with Cutter Thomison at the finals to make a 3.7-second run in the second round, tying for the win for $2,039 a man.
Waco wasn’t all smooth sailing, though.
“I scored bad, broke the barrier,” Tryan said of the first round. “They had the score short, and I tried to jump it. I didn’t rope very good overall, but I had a big enough lead to where I still won it.”
The plan this year was never to make the Texas Circuit Finals, or to circuit rodeo at all. Since retiring from full-time ProRodeo, Tryan has been heading for his teenage standout son, Braylon, at the amateur rodeos and jackpots.
But at the beginning of the 2025 season, the newly crowned Resistol Rookie Heeler of the Year Nicky Northcott needed a partner, so he and Tryan started entering and had some success.
“Me and Nicky won Mercedes, won a round at San Angelo, won Bryan,” Tryan said. “Then I had enough to already have it made. I wasn’t even planning on going at all, honestly. But then I had enough won. So, then I started going, I started winning, and then I was at the top, and I just kept going.”
That success won Tryan enough money that he figured he had the circuit finals made, at least, and kept entering here and there with different partners—including Jace Helton, Paul Eaves, Thomison and Eddie Medina.
Tryan rode an 8-year-old sorrel gelding he calls “Frankie,” who was new to his string as of this summer, and rode his older horse “Johnson,” registered Cee How Nifty, on one steer in Waco.
Until the Last Steer
Arnold made the trip to Waco at No. 3 behind NFR qualifiers Kaden Profili and Ross Ashford, but they were all within $1,000 of each other.
With the help of 2020 World Champion header Colby Lovell, he left as the Texas Circuit champion heeler.
Lovell and Arnold started the week off hot, winning the first round with a 4.5-second run worth $2,330 a man. They were out of the money in the second round but came back to place in the third with a 4.6-second run for $583 a man. After drawing bad in the short round, they still managed to place in the average on three head for $1,738 a man, giving Arnold just what he needed to come out on top.
“It was all close coming in,” Arnold said. “After that first round we won, that helped me a lot. Then we placed again in the third round, and I just had to win something in the average that last night.”
Arnold’s plan wasn’t originally to rodeo hard, but after a good year, the goals started to get checked off the list.
“We weren’t going to rodeo seriously or anything,” Arnold said. “We just wanted to make the amateur finals and the circuit finals, and it worked out. We went the first of the year; we were just trying to get into Houston and got lucky. We did get into that, but the rodeos that counted for Houston also counted for the circuit. So, we did good at the beginning of the year, and that gave us enough.”
Arnold credited part of his success to the bay mare he was riding in Waco. JM Bourbon Gilligan, or “Bourbon,” was trained by Lovell originally. After a few years on the road with some big names, including a trip to the 2023 American Rodeo with Eaves, Bourbon found her way to a friend of Lovell and Arnold’s, who let Arnold take her to the rodeos this year and will let him take her to Las Vegas this December for the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale.
“She’s a great horse,” he said. “One of Colby and I’s good friends Griffin Marshall ended up buying that mare not long ago, and Griffin sent her back down there and let me ride her at the rodeos.”
