story by Lily Weinacht
A broken arm briefly slowed 18-year-old Landon Koehn’s progress through the tie-down roping standings this spring, but the cowboy from Salina, Kan., managed to move from sixth place to first in three rodeos. He claimed the state tie-down roping title just a week after his cast came off. “I still had a little bit of doubt after just coming off a broken arm, but in the back of my mind, I had the confidence that I could do it,” he says. “I got bucked off while I was roping the day after our first high school rodeo of the season, so I just team roped in the next two rodeos. Tie-down in a cast was pretty difficult at first, but I cut it down a little bit so I could use my hand.”
Landon made his debut at the national level as a freshman in the tie-down roping and qualified again last year in both the tie-down and team roping, which he returns in a final time this summer. He and his 17-year-old brother, Jess, were raised on rodeo from an early age, a sport their dad wanted them to experience. “Dad had wanted to rodeo his whole life but didn’t have the chance, so he asked me and my brother if we wanted to try it out,” Landon explains. “He met some people through the ranching world whose kids rodeoed, so we just started up!” The brothers advanced from dummy roping and the wooly thrills of mutton busting, to roping on horseback when their dad hired a roper from south Texas to teach them. “Jeff Copenhaver came up three or four times a year and coached us, and Dad learned to rope with us. Jeff still comes up twice a year and I visit with him regularly,” says Landon.
Along with high school rodeo, he is filling his PRCA permit this summer, competing on the Mountain States Circuit and branching further west to Oregon, Nevada, and Utah. “I’ve never travelled this far in rodeo, and it’s a little bit nerve wracking competing against all the pro guys, but I’m for sure excited.” Landon is team roping at pro rodeos with heeler Rio Esquibel, and turned his truck toward Gillette, Wyo., to rope with Chandler Comfort during the NHSFR. “I pro rodeoed until early July, then went to the IFYR in Shawnee before stopping at the house to pick up different horses for Nationals,” he says.
Landon’s main roping horse is Roper, a mare the family purchased as a yearling and trained. “She lost an eye from glaucoma three years ago, so I had to go a whole summer without riding her, which was hard since she’d been the only horse I’d really ridden until then,” Landon recalls. “When she was cleared to ride again, we exercised her for a month and went straight to roping, and only having one eye didn’t affect her at all.” His family runs 30 head of horses on Koehn Ranch outside of Salina, along with 700 head of Corriente cattle. “We rope them as calves, and once they’re big enough to team rope, we lease 300 head or more in the summer. Then we’ll sell the steers and put the heifers back into the herd.”
Though spare time is scarce, Landon and his dad and step-mom, Chad and Susan, enjoy roping at the house, while he and his mom, Kim, are going to a lake near Branson, Mo., to visit family after Nationals. Since graduating from Manhattan Virtual Academy, Landon signed on with Ranger College in Ranger, Texas, where he’ll be rodeoing and working on his general studies. “I don’t know for sure what my future plans are for rodeo between college and pro rodeos in the next few years,” he finishes, “but whatever I do, I hope to be successful in it.”
