The entire audience at the Lazy E watched a full circle moment at the JR Ironman during the weekend of the 2023 event: 17-year-old Ketch Kelton was crowned JR Ironman Champion and handed a check for $20,000 as his father, multiple-time Cinch Timed Event Championship competitor, Chance Kelton cheered him on.
“There’s been a lot of preparation and coaching behind this,” Chance said. “He’s prepared his whole life. We’re Timed Event Championship guys, this is what we do.”
Round-By-Round JR Ironman Recap
Kelton broke the aggregate record thanks to his stellar performance across all three rounds, blasting through 12 head in 107.4 seconds to earn the $20,000 championship. The previous record was held by the 2023 No. 2 finisher, 2022 JR Ironman Clay Clayman.
After the first round, it looked like Clayman was set to dominate the event for the second year in a row when he won the performance. However, Kelton was behind him and wrapped his first four runs in 39.7 seconds behind Clayman’s 36.3.
Kelton took his chance to move in the second round when Clayman pulled out a second loop in the tie-down roping, and never gave the Missouri cowboy the lead back. He finished in the driver’s seat and earned $750 in 32.7 seconds.
The third round began with Ketch having barely one second lead over Clayman, but by the end he had the win no matter the outcome in the final event—the steer wrestling—due to having just over a 60-second lead on the pack, despite Clayman’s best effort with a 4.1-second dogging run.
“I told him we won it, he could take the 60 (in the bulldogging) and win it. He said ‘No way. I gotta catch him.”
Ketch’s dad and 12-time Ironman competitor Chance Kelton
Kelton sailed through all four runs in the final round and finished second in the round with a time of 35.0 seconds on four head. The round win belonged to Kreece Dearing, who finally broke up the payout domination of Kelton and Clayman with a time of 33.5 seconds on four.
In the aggregate, Clayman finished in the No. 2 position with 162.6 seconds on 12 and earned $5,000, and on his heels was Tennessee cowboy Connor Griffith with a time of 176.3 seconds, worth $2,000.
The Kid on the Paint Pony
“Longtime fans, they know who he is,” Ketch’s mom, Tammy said. “He’s the kid that used to ride the paint pony and push cattle out (during the CTEC).
True CTEC fans will remember young Ketch pushing cattle out of the arena on his paint pony while his father competed when he was growing up. Chance Kelton competed in 12 consecutive Cinch Timed Event Championships from 1999-2011.
“We stayed home the year he was born, so he went to his first Timed Event in 2007,” Tammy said.
That’s right. Ketch has been in the building cheering on the big guys since he was a small child, and he’s already got his sights locked in on the Ironman coming up.
“We got here and the big guys were tying steers in the arena,” Chance said. “He looked at me and said ‘Dad, can I go tie with the guys? He already wants to trip steers.”
2023 JR Ironman Aggregate Results
Round Three (on four head)
- Kreece Dearing 33.5 seconds, worth $750
- Ketch Kelton 35.0 seconds, worth $250
- Conner Griffith 57.6 seconds
- Mason Appleton 63.5 seconds
- Dylan Hancock 72.9 seconds
- Wyatt Williams 78.2 seconds
- Clay Clayman 88.9 seconds
- Caleb Lake 101.2 seconds
- Evan Bottini 140.5 seconds
- Jake Holmes 171.4 seconds
Aggregate Results (on 12 head)
- Ketch Kelton, 107.4 seconds worth $20,000
- Clay Clayman, 162.6 seconds worth $5,000
- Conner Griffith, 176.3 seconds worth $2,000
- Dylan Hancock, 191.0 seconds
- Mason Appleton, 192.7 seconds
- Caleb Lake, 258.8 seconds
- Wyatt Williams, 270.0 seconds
- Kreece Dearing, 300.0 seconds
- Evan Bottinin 345.1 seconds
- Jake Holmes 401.1 seconds
