story by Siri Stevens
Ryder Ladner is going to be a sophomore this fall at college, Pearl River Community College in Poplarville, Mississippi. “My whole family has been involved with this school playing basketball and I’m going to follow in their footsteps, but with rodeo instead,” said the 19-year-old from Kiln, Mississippi. Kiln is a small tourist town, home of Brett Favre. “I live right by the beach and that’s what we do is fish when we’re not roping.” He ropes every day – competing in the calf roping, team roping, and bull dogging. He likes calf roping the best. “All the weight is on you and you don’t depend on anybody else.”
His sister, Maggie Shorter, was a rodeo queen (2005 Mississippi High School Rodeo Queen) as well as made it to the National High School Finals in the goat tying. His dad, Roger, owned and trained race horses. He gave that up while his kids were rodeoing, and is just now getting back into it. Ryder was too big to be a jockey and said, “there’s only so much you can do with a race horse – so I started roping and it just went from there.”
2017 NLBFR Senior Boy All Around World Champion, Ryder Ladner at the 2017 NLBFR – 3 Lazy J Photography
Ryder won the National Little Britches All Around Junior Boy his eighth grade year and came back this year to win the Senior Boy All Around, a goal he set for himself in order to be invited to the Junior Iron Man. “I was out there helping Marcus Theriot with the big one, and I tried my hardest to get this done.”
He has classes on Tuesday and Thursday and spends the rest of the time practicing. He is going to school for Business Administration and minor in marketing. “I want to have my own equipment auction business.” Business is not new to Ryder, he and his brother-in-law owned a rope company, Riviera Ropes, for three years. “We were presented with an opportunity to purchase it and start it, so we did. We got it going well enough to sell it.” They made ropes the entire time they had the company and with Ryder’s involvement with rodeo, it became too much to get it all done. “We got it going well enough to sell so we did.”
He attributes his rodeo success to his parents. “My momma and daddy told me if I was going to do it, I might as well be the best, so I worked at it until I could compete. I entered my first rodeo when I was four and it progressed from there.”
His success includes his horses, a new calf horse he bought this past spring helped him in the calf roping at the NLBFR, and his head horse is one the family raised. His bulldogging horse is the same one his brother in law rode in high school.
His mom, Sharon, is the office manager of a fish wear company Rip a Lip Fish Wear. “I am very proud of him,” she said. “He’s been swinging a rope since he was 15 months old; both he and his sister rodeoed. We spent hours in the arena with him and we are very excited and proud of his accomplishments. We look forward to what God has for him in the future.”
The future will certainly include rodeo, he competes at the college rodeos as well as the PCA rodeos. “Ryder stays focused on the job at hand,” said his rodeo coach, Robby Shaw. “He is a humble young man.”
He would like to thank his sponsors, Resistol and Security Zone and his parents. “They got me my start in everything and supported me.”
