Coy Rahlmann and Logan Medlin were the high-money earners for the week of Aug. 10-16 with $13,787 a man, winning $12,462 at the Farm-City Pro Rodeo in Hermiston, Oregon, to make significant jumps in the PRCA world standings in the middle of the August push.
For a team that had spent much of the summer climbing toward the Top 15, Hermiston offered exactly the kind of August opportunity they needed.
Before the week kicked off, Rahlmann was sitting No. 14 on the head side, while Medlin was No. 16. As of Aug. 18, 2026, Rahlmann is sitting No. 8 with $97,469 and Medlin is No. 11 with $98,434.
“We won as much last week going to three rodeos as we won over the Fourth of July,” NFR heeler Medlin said. “Anytime you can do that, that’s just a big testament to the committee at Hermiston, how much money they put up to be able to win that much at one rodeo. It’s almost Reno and it’s in August—that’s a big hit.”
Rahlmann and Medlin hadn’t exactly stormed through the first half of the summer, though.
“We haven’t been an electric team, but it just seems like from the Fourth on we’ve been a team that’s been climbing,” NFR header Rahlmann said.
On their first steer at Hermiston, Rahlmann and Medlin finished second in the round for $4,971 each after Rahlmann nailed the start on a steer Medlin said wasn’t particularly slow.
“I don’t know if you could have got a better start than what Coy did,” the Tatum, New Mexico man said. “He did a great job of getting out. Our steer was not slow—I mean, he wasn’t the strongest one in there, but he was not slow. He got such a good start and did such a good job that we were able to win second in the first round and set ourselves up to potentially have a big rodeo.”
Their second steer nearly took that opportunity away. Rahlmann turned the steer to be 5-flat, but Medlin got a leg, dropping them from near the top of the average to last call into the short round.
“I did everything in my power to screw that up,” Medlin laughed. “I really thought I’d probably shot ourselves in the foot, but the way it played out, they let us sneak in there 12th callback with a leg.”
Sitting 12th meant Rahlmann and Medlin couldn’t make up the gap in the average on time alone. Even if they were fast, the teams ahead of them would have to make mistakes for them to move very far.
It was a position Rahlmann had been taught how to handle long before he ever went pro.
“My dad always taught me when I was a kid at the ropings, if you were in that spot in the short round where it didn’t matter how good of a run or how fast of a run you made and the guys ahead of you had to mess up in order for you to win, that’s the card he wanted you to play,” the Ellsinore, Missouri man said. “Make them come beat you.”
Medlin thought something around a 5.2 could win one of the top spots in the round and potentially move them to seventh or eighth in the average.
But that is not the way the cookie crumbled.
“It just kind of fell to us,” Medlin said. “There were some things that happened to teams that you wouldn’t think would happen and most of the time don’t. But I guess that’s why they play the game—you just never know.”
Rahlmann and Medlin won the short round for $1,153 apiece with a 5.0 and climbed all the way to third in the average for another $6,338 each. Altogether, Hermiston paid them $12,462 a man.
Their other check on the week came at the Yellowstone River Round-Up in Billings, Montana. After coming up empty at Baker earlier that day, Rahlmann and Medlin went to Billings for the first performance without knowing much about their steer and stopped the clock in 5.0 seconds for ninth and $1,325 apiece.
“We’ve been on a deal where we try to make sure that no matter what, we don’t get skunked,” Rahlmann said. “We didn’t have any luck at Baker that morning. So in my mind, I was going to just make sure I turned the steer and give us a chance to be placing, at least placing when we left so that we could keep the ball rolling.”
“5-flat in today’s world is not something you hang your hat on, but we were fortunate enough to slip in there and let us win a little bit,” Medlin added.
For Rahlmann, the ability to turn an imperfect rodeo—or an imperfect week—into something positive is one of the biggest differences he has noticed since roping with Medlin.
“It just seems like he’s a winner,” Rahlmann said. “He’s led me to figure out how to turn a week that wasn’t supposed to be very good and salvage it into a pretty good week still.”
Five-time NFR qualifier Medlin is hesitant to put too much weight on one big week. Rahlmann and Medlin had already been flirting with the Top 15 before Hermiston, but with the amount of money still left on the table, Medlin knows the battle is far from over.
“(The Summer) is such a long three months that even if you’re behind or even if you’re ahead, you can’t get the cart before the horse,” Medlin said. “It’s nice to maybe be in the conversation, but man, we’re still a long ways from where we need to get to. We are just keeping our head down and treating it no different than whenever we were behind—one steer at a time.”
Rahlmann is approaching the race to the Thomas & Mack from a different place mentally, too. He made the NFR back in 2021 and has not been back since, a fact that changed the way he views where he sits in the standings.
“I feel like I’m in such a different spot in life that it does feel easier for me to just, like you said, just go rope, have fun, go do my deal,” he said. “I want to be the best to ever live. But I feel like also saying that, when you let this define who you are, I feel like it can avalanche on you very fast.”
And rather than trying to protect a Top 15 position, the plan is to keep roping their game.
“I’m just going to try to keep roping like I’m trying to win something,” Rahlmann said. “My plan is to hit the barrier and try to win the first round, just like I’ve been doing everywhere, and it’ll either work or it won’t.”
Medlin’s approach is much the same.
“Whenever it’s your chance to have a big week, you got to capitalize on it,” he said. “There’ve been times where you might rope good, but miss the wrong ones, and it feels like you never can get your head above water. But you’ve just got to do your best you can. And when they run the steer in there, just try to beat that one and the rest will take care of itself.”