story by Don Reichert
In 1988, South Dakota cowboys won three National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association Championships and the All-Around. Winning the bareback riding and the all-around was Ken Lensegrav, Meadow, South Dakota. Saddle bronc riding winner, Eudell Larson, and steer wrestling winner, Cory Ferguson, were featured previously.
Lensegrav was two weeks old when he attended his first rodeo club meeting with his dad, Dave, an NIRA contestant in the mid 1960’s at South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota. In 1988 when Ken won the NIRA Bareback Riding Championship and the All-Around, he was riding for Montana State University. In 1989 he was again NIRA Champion Bareback Rider.
He was the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Bareback Riding Rookie of the Year in 1987. In 1988 he made his first of 10 trips to the PRCA National Finals Rodeo with his highest placings in the world being second, two fourths, sixth and seventh.
During his bareback riding career he won the PRCA Badlands Circuit Finals Rodeo five times, was year-end champion three times, and won the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo in 1988 and 1992. In 2004, the year he retired from bareback riding, he was honored as a Cowboy Great at the Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center Tribute Dinner in Ft. Pierre, South Dakota.
Ken says he married a “good gal,” his wife Kim, who stayed home and worked while he rodeoed and used his rodeo earnings to get into ranching near Interior, South Dakota. When asked which was easier, riding bareback horses or ranching, he chuckled and said “Riding bareback horses, but it’s a young man’s game!”
They now enjoy watching their children Katie and Kelsey rodeo. Katie rodeoed at Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota and Kelsey is at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.
He is a Kadoka, South Dakota area school board member and is on the South Dakota High School Rodeo Association Board of Directors.
Ken has fond memories of college rodeo where he loved every minute. He says “Montana State was a good college that helped me become independent and make lifelong friends.” It prepared him to pro rodeo and he wouldn’t change a thing. Ken encourages anyone who has an interest in college rodeo to do it.
Ken along with Eudell Larson and Cory Ferguson will be honored as Champions at the NIRA Alumni “8’s” Reunion June 15 and 16, 2018 during the NIRA College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyoming.
For information on the “8’s” reunion:
