Winner's Jude Sargent, Scotland's Kade Odens post top-5 finishes for South Dakota at NHSFR

ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. — Winner’s Jude Sargent and Scotland’s Kade Odens both finished with top-five finishes for Team South Dakota in their respective events at the National High School Finals Rodeo.

Sargent took second place in the NHSFR trapshooting competition, scoring 190 points out of 200. Sargent hit 196 of 200 targets over two sessions to score the top finish. Brandon Heck, of Arkansas, won the competition by going 100-for-100 on his targets in the final round and finishing with a two-round total of 198 targets.

Odens’ took a fourth-place finish home in steer wrestling for Team South Dakota. Odens’ aggregate time for the event was 18.3 seconds, good for fourth place in a field of nearly 150 competitors for the week. Odens had a short-go time of 6.27 seconds, good for eighth place in the final round. That came on top of a seventh-place finish in the second go-round of 5.54 seconds.

Odens, who graduated as a senior from Scotland in 2024, earned more than $1,700 in winnings from the event. The steer wrestling championship was won by Walker Goffard, of Berlin, Wisconsin, who had the top time of 14.73 seconds across three rounds. Quinn Moon, of Wall High School, finished eighth overall with a combined time of 21.7 seconds, giving South Dakota two of the top-eight finishers.

Treyvan Talsma, of Springfield, also made the short-go finals in steer wrestling. He was 14th in the round with a time of 7.3 seconds and finished 11th overall in the steer wrestling final standings with a time of 22.23 seconds.

In the trapshooting competition, Winner/Colome teammate Jack Anderson and Sargent were tied after the long round, each hitting 99 of 100 targets, two of only four shooters to hit 99 or 100 targets in the opening round that included 147 competitors. Anderson hit 93 of 100 targets in the short-go to finish at 192 targets total but that landed him in 17th overall. Winner’s Oren Sargent hit 94 of 100 targets in the long round but only the top-24 shooters advanced to the short-go round.

Belle Fourche’s Rance Bowden won his performance on Saturday morning, with a tiedown roping time of 10.13 seconds, which was 10th in the second-go round of performances. He was also 10th in the all-round cowboy standings with 475 points scored.

Bowden and Belle Fourche teammate Sern Weishaar also combined to finish fifth overall in the team roping timing, with a time of 25.0 seconds over three runs, earning $2,634.67 for the pair.

Arina Haugen, of Sturgis, was the winner of the event’s all-around rookie cowgirl honors, scoring 840 points through the barrel racing, pole bending and breakaway roping events. She was fourth in the overall all-around cowgirl standings, and fifth overall in the breakaway roping standings with a time of 9.32 seconds. The event was won by Atlanta, Kansas’ Baylee Barker, who had an aggregate time of 8.19 seconds. Haugen was also 12th overall in pole bending average and 15th in barrel racing.

Gregory’s Taos Weborg, who was third in the bareback riding jackpot in the first go, earned $813.17 in winnings from that effort. He finished 41st overall in the aggregate results for bareback riding.

Other notable Mitchell-area aggregate finishes included Woonsocket’s Tierney Breen finishing 30th in goat tying and Wessington Springs’ Raylee Fagerhaug taking 80th in a field of 189 competitors. Breen finished with an aggregate time of 17.06 seconds while Fagerhaug’s time was 20.05 seconds. Winner’s Garret Phillips was 47th in the reined cow horse competition with a score of 561.5 points.

As a team, South Dakota finished sixth in the boys standings with 3,215 points, while the South Dakota girls were 13th with 1,580 points. Texas won both team competitions with 4,997.50 points for the boys and 5,655 points for the girls.

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