Tayla Moeykens Concludes Legendary Bobcat Career at CNFR Beginning Sunday
Three Forks product competes in barrel racing, breakaway roping at final collegiate event
Bill Lamberty
Men's Rodeo
Posted: 6/5/2024 3:02:00 PM
BOZEMAN, Montana – Not that she remembers, but rodeo has been part of Tayla Moeykens' life from the start.
"My parents actually brought me home from the hospital and set me up on a horse" after her birth, the recent Montana State graduate said with a laugh. "I've been on horses my whole life. I've been barrel racing by myself since I was three and breakaway roping since I was in fifth grade, so I don't know life without it. We've always had between seven and 12 horses on the place so it's just a part of me. It's who I am."
Moeykens displays who she is in the Blue and Gold one last time this week. The Three Forks product and her Montana State rodeo teammates head to Casper, Wyoming, for the 2024 College National Finals Rodeo (CNFR) June 9-15. Moeykens enters the national championship event as the nation's top-ranked barrel racer, looking to further enhance her status as one of the greatest Bobcats of all time.
She embraces the challenge. "Obviously it's a big event," she said, "but my approach never changes. I'll start concentrating on (Sunday's breakaway roping matinee) on Sunday, then barrel racing on Monday, then breakaway. I just worry about what's next."
Moeykens blasted through the Big Sky Region spring season, capturing the barrel racing title and also qualifying for the CNFR in the breakaway roping. She won five of the 10 2023-24 region barrel racing crowns, including three of five in the spring.
That spectacular spring campaign began at home with the MSU Spring Rodeo (she won one of the two barrel races), an event she called "surreal. (Competing at home for the final time was) kind of a bittersweet moment, you know. Getting to compete in the Brick is always exciting and you look forward to it every year. I have kids in my class who start asking me in September when the Spring Rodeo is, everybody loves the feeling of the Brick, and as a competitor being able to feel that energy and the noise and the support from the community, that's unmatched."
As the excitement built for MSU's Spring Rodeo and ultimately the 2024 spring season and CNFR – the final ride of her collegiate career – Moeykens conducts herself as usual. "We always take it one run at a time," she said. "You can't think about the end result and you can't worry about where you're at. A lot of the time I don't look at the standings because it doesn't really matter. You've got to make your run every single time and you have to focus on that day, that run, and that's all that you can control."
That focus, a deeply-rooted understanding of her sport and its nature, comes naturally. Moeykens hails from a rodeo family, her mother Deena and father Rick Moeykens not only fostering Tayla's passion for the sport but active participants themselves. "My mom started rodeo when she was 12, and my dad always team roped a little bit," Tayla said. "My mom's made the NRA finals numerous times and the Montana Pro Rodeo Circuit Finals three times, and she's really taught me everything I know. To get to carry that on and keep going with something that we both love is really cool."
Rodeo has always been present in her life, and the same applies to the Bobcat rodeo program. "I've always wanted to be a part of the (MSU rodeo) team," she says, and that began in unusual fashion. "I grew up in Three Forks and I always wanted to be a Bobcat to do the runout onto the football field" ahead of the MSU football team, she said with a smile. "I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and on top of that MSU has such a strong rodeo program and the immense amount of support we get from not only the community but the also the university is unmatched at a lot of places."
Moeykens helped key one of the unforgettable moments in Bobcat football history, the special evening in September, 2021, when Montana State returned to the Bobcat Stadium for the first time in over 500 days. After missing the 2020-21 season and transitioning through a coaching change, the emotions surrounding college football's return to Bozeman reached a crescendo.
That weekend the MSU rodeo team competed in Cody, Wyoming, potentially depriving the Bobcats and their fans the beloved tradition of the finest runout in FCS football. But Moeykens and her mates Shelby Rasmussen, Paige Rasmussen and Lindsey Pulsipher, who just a few weeks earlier won the women's CNFR national championship for the Bobcats, weren't willing to abandon that sacred ritual. In the midst of the two-day Northwest College event Moeykens and the Rasmussen sisters gathered themselves and drove back to Bozeman in time for the 6 pm kickoff, meeting the recently-graduated Pulsipher, who traveled from her home in Idaho.
"It was the only time in history, I believe, that it was 'CATS' and not 'BOBCATS' running onto the field in front of the team," Moeykens said with a smile, "but we were so happy to be able to do it. We competed on Friday, drove back, led the team out that night at the football game, then we drove back for slack on Sunday morning. That was my first time running out, I rode Lizard for that one, and to feel the energy inside and just the energy in the stadium, it was a super cool experience. Besides Game Day (in 2022, when the Bobcats blasted the Grizzlies on a day when the eyes of college football fell on Bozeman) it was the loudest I've heard it."
That experience, Moeykens says, highlights the synergy rodeo athletes build with horses. "It's definitely a feeling," she said. "With our horses we definitely have a connection, they can feel what we're feeling and we can feel what they're feeling. In situations like that where there's a lot of excitement you just build off of each other and you can feel it in them. Lizard's done it so many times now that he's pretty calm until they hand me the flag and we stand on the turf, then he knows it's about time to go and he's ready."
To those that know Moeykens well, her ability to connect with her horses and get the most out of them in competition are part and parcel of her success. Former teammate Paige Rasmussen, also a national champion Bobcat, calls "her love for her horses" Moeykens' defining characteristic. "Her horses are so well taken care of, they're her kids, they're her number one teammates. Seeing how well she communicates with her horses is so great."
Third-year MSU rodeo coach Kyle Whitaker calls Moeykens' ability to utilize all three of her horses situationally a positive attribute. "Some barrel racers just have one good horse but Tayla's proven that she can be successful on multiple horses," he said. "She's a really good jockey."
Moeykens rides three horses for competition, including two primary in the Fieldhouse, Yeti during slack of the first rodeo and Blue in front of a packed house during the championship go-rounds. "I have three I typically run in barrels, Lizard, Yeti and Blue," she said. "Blue is the one that I won my 2021 National Championship on, Yeti was the one that I ran last spring and also won the Reserve National Championship on, and my rope horse is Little Lately and I've rode her all four years of college."
She said selecting which horse to ride for any given event is a blend of art and science. "We do it based on the rodeo and look at arena setup, the ground conditions. Yeti and Lizard tend to run a little better on deep ground whereas Blue kind of likes the hard ground. Lizard prefers outdoor, big arenas where he can run, Yeti's kind of my indoor horse, and Blue's pretty multiple. She'll run anywhere. I give all the credit to them, they're a big part of anybody's success."
While Moeykens praises her horses, Rasmussen said there's much more to winning than finding the fast mount. "She has ridden so many horses throughout the years, I've rodeoed with her since we were little and she's rode so many different horses, but she's such a good jockey that she can ride any of these horses and win on them," she said.
While Moeykens leans on her own family daily, she also deeply loves the community rodeo creates. "I rodeoed with Paige for many years and a lot of these kids I've known most of my life," she said of the athletes in the Big Sky Region. "We're competitor but we go out and support each other, and that's one of my favorite things about rodeo, it's just a big family whether you're on a team or not. I have friends on other college and university teams and I support them as well, because you have to support each other to help each other succeed. That's really the best part about rodeo."
The quilt of support that envelopes Moeykens, though, starts with her parents, and specifically her mother. "She's definitely my coach," Tayla Moeykens says. "Kyle and Savanna (Meyers, MSU assistant coach) have a whole team to run, so for me for barrels and for horses in general I have my mom. Crystal Hebert is my rope coach, she's the one I learned to break my rope from. She's a former Bobcat, probably the biggest Bobcat fan you'll ever meet! My mom, my dad and her are probably my biggest supporters."
Moeykens also appreciates the support she and the Bobcat program receives on a macro level. That includes everything from the rodeo program's Stock Family Training Center, where the team now practices when classroom schedules allow rather than during slots dictated by a renters' schedule, and where many athletes keep their horses. "Having the facility (available) when we can go practice whenever we have time is super beneficial," she said.
She also appreciates the access that MSU Rodeo's status as a varsity sport, rather than a club, allows. "The support and the opportunities we get by having those resources and being part of the athletic department is a big help," she said. "For the first couple of years we didn't really know we had access to the training room, but having that access I've seen a lot of guys and girls grow in their abilities and their strength and their confidence. I think it shows that the university really does care about the rodeo team where at a lot of schools rodeo might get kicked to the side or not taken as seriously. Those opportunities definitely give us a leg up."
MSU Rodeo's Chute Boss Club and the organizational and marketing support provided by Bobcats Athletics are among the factors that Moeykens cites as leading to the program's success. "Their support allows us to focus on our studies and our practice so we don't have to worry about everything else," she said. "We can go make our run and worry about competing and not about costs or living situations or anything like that, and I want to thank them."
One of the advantages of rodeoing close to her hometown is that her family remains involved in her career. Deena Moeykens' work with Lizard, Yeti and Blue proves invaluable during the course of a rodeo season, Tayla said. That work includes tuning, which she describes as "slow work," walk-through type practices that focus on the "technique involved in getting around those barrels," Moeykens said. Deena's proficiency in honing that skill draws praise from her daughter. "I wouldn't be able to do it without her."
Whitaker is well-versed in the power of family in rodeo circles. His father Chip was a pro rodeo legend, and his daughter Jenae is on the Bobcat rodeo squad. He understands the family-centered strength Tayla Moeykens brings to the Blue and Gold. "For me there's a comfort level (in coaching athletes from rodeo families," he said. "I know that her family has competed and that they understand the process and the pressure, the highs and the lows. People that have rodeo roots, I know that they know what to expect."
Part of knowing what to expect is the ability to deal with a wide range of outcomes, and Moeykens said that mental toughness is something rodeo both demands and breeds. That trait stands out in a season that is both short and disconnected, with five rodeos in the fall and five more in the spring.
"Mental toughness is a big thing with rodeo and college especially," Moeykens said. "You have 10 rodeos over the fall and spring and there's not a lot of wiggle room. In pro you can go to 50, 60 a year, but in college taking it one run at a time really becomes important. If you get too far ahead of yourself you don't have a lot of room to correct it and make up for it. If you focus on every run and just focus on the rodeo you're on you'll be way better off than if you worry about the last rodeo of the year when you can't control that at the moment. Being in the moment and being confident in your abilities and just going out and making your run is how you stay mentally tough and stay in the game."
Moeykens' 14.66 in the barrel racing during Sunday's Championship Go at the MSU Spring Rodeo gave her a win in the go and the average during the last college competition of her career inside Worthington Arena, her home stadium and the one for which she openly professes love. Whitaker called it a "great performance," and Moeykens said it was "an awesome feeling."
But it was only one run, a foundational part of her approach to rodeo. "I stay with that mentality of one run at a time," she said. "It is our home rodeo, it is the Brick, it is super exciting, but it's still a rodeo. It's still a part of the Big Sky Region. I have to keep my head on straight so I can go out and compete to the best of my ability. In barrels we always say no matter the size of the rodeo it's just three cans. You're going out there and doing the exact same thing, it's just a different place, so I try to keep a level head, keep my head on my shoulders, and go out and make my run."
That solid mental approach led Moeykens to leading the nation in barrel racing heading to Casper for the CNFR, and she also qualified in breakaway roping. Whitaker is pulling for his star to add to her already-cemented legacy as an all-time Bobcat great. "She's had the greatest barrel racing career here at MSU, ever, so like Paige (Rasmussen) last year I'm really hoping she can go out with a title. All the chips have to fall right for that to happen. She's got the talent, she's got the horse to do it, but it's rodeo and things can happen. But I hope she can end on a high note with a championship."
And that dovetails into her long-term plans, which she hopes leads to a long, successful professional career. "I have to say the Brick is my favorite rodeo, mainly because it's the most like a pro rodeo, which is where my heart lies," says the homegrown star whose sights were always set on the big dome in Bozeman, and beyond. "I want to make the NFR one day and hopefully be a world champion, so having this atmosphere and this setup is amazing."
And she'll do it by taking it one run at a time and riding the wave of support offered by those who surround her. "That's the only way to do it."
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