WPRA NEWS

Kenzie Kelton Top Team Roping Header in WPRA

By Ted Harbin

For the rest of her career, Kenzie Kelton will be recognized as a WPRA world champion.

She’s not even 21 years old, but it’s the culmination of a life spent horseback and with a rope in her hand. She took advantage of the all-girl roping last April at the Bob Feist Invitational, which is co-sanctioned by the WPRA, then secured her first championship during the WPRA World Finals this past November in Waco, Texas.

“I got to ride Peaches, our good, yellow head horse, and that made it a lot of fun,” said Kelton, 20, the eldest child of Tammy and Chance Kelton, the later of whom competed as a header at three National Finals Rodeos and qualified for the National Finals Steer Roping five times.

“I was more focused on the breakaway that week so I could get qualified for Fort Worth and Houston, and I ended up qualified for Fort Worth.”

Most of the $13,803 she won heading in 2024 came in Oklahoma, where she won the aggregate title with Whitney DeSalvo and also earned money while turning steers for Kyleigh Howell and Danielle Lowman. While in Waco, Kelton and Haiden Thompson won the second round and placed in the third, scoring a sixth-place finish in the team roping average.

“Haiden and I are just good friends, and we pretty much entered it to have fun,” Kelton said. “I wasn’t really worried about it, but if I was going to win the title, it was just going to happen.”

While roping is a big part of her life, the cowgirl who will turn 21 in a few weeks had her hands full in 2024. She was attending cosmetology school in Phoenix, so most of her roping involved turning steers for her younger brother, Ketch.

“I’m just trying to get back in the swing of things, because I didn’t get to rope for so long because I was in school full time,” she said. “Now that I’ve graduated, I’m getting to rope more.”

When Kelton competed, she was pretty salty. While she took the heading world title, she finished 20^th in heeling, fourth in tie-down roping and third in the all-around race. That type of talent comes through hard work and having the right mentors along the way. Enter her parents. Chance Kelton always made sure his kids had solid horses, but that was because they worked at it.

“My dad preached to us all about horsemanship while we were growing up,” Kenzie Kelton said. “When we’d go practice in the arena, we wouldn’t be allowed to throw our ropes. We’d have to make our horses work the same every time, because my dad said, ‘We don’t have the money to buy $100,000 horses, so we’ve got to make them ourselves.’

“When we were in junior high, we had good horses, but ever since we’ve been in high school, my dad has kept amazing ones underneath us. Horsepower is everything, especially in heading, because I’m so high-numbered. I have to work twice as hard to try to out-head these men that I’m roping against at these higher-number ropings. To have a fast and free head horse is key for me, as is one that stays honest every time and one that scores, because I can’t go out there and reach like all these men that are the same number as me.”

That’s why Peaches is special to the Kelton family. Ketch Kelton rides the palomino most of the time, so his big sister surely likes the opportunities the mare provides.

“She is a big advantage,” Kenzie Kelton said. “It’s not all her, though. I had a black horse (Kodak) that helped me at the BFI also. I had the chance to take Peaches to the WPRA finals, so I did, but I would have taken that black horse if I needed and been just fine.”

The relationship she has with her horses is a fundamental reason why she has found success at an early age and why she’s the 2024 WPRA Team Roping Heading World Champion.

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