The golden piece of designed metal weighing about half a pound hasn’t even arrived, but Taylor Munsell knows exactly where it’s going when it does.
“Oh, it’ll for sure go on my belt,” said Munsell, the 2025 world champion breakaway roper from the northwest Oklahoma community of Alva. “Those things are meant to be worn.”
Gold buckles are the most coveted trophy in rodeo, wearable hardware that is more than a device to tighten a belt. It symbolizes a lifetime of dreams, 365 days of work and a year’s worth of excellence. It identifies the best in a given season, and Munsell is certainly fitting.
Raised by a roping family in the western Oklahoma hamlet of Arnett (population 495), she has always been an athlete. She thrived in the spotlight and, as a teenager, learned how to work through thoracic outlet syndrome, which is a group of disorders caused by compressed nerves or blood vessels in the space between the neck and shoulder. It had been affecting her while shooting a basketball and roping, and she’s been ardent about the stretches and exercises she needs to do to keep it at bay.
“It was kind of a blessing in disguise that everything happened when it did for me with it coming about before I got super competitive,” she said. “It was just part of my whole journey to becoming competitive, and I was navigating that as well and taking care of it versus already being super competitive and having a shoulder injury and having to relearn to do all these things.”
It was just a path for her. She moved to Alva to attend Northwestern Oklahoma State University and be part of the Rangers’ rodeo team, just like her big brother, Hunter, and her little sister, Lindy. While there, Taylor Munsell became Northwestern’s first cowgirl to win an intercollegiate title, taking the breakaway roping crown in 2019. Six and a half years later, she added rodeo’s gold to her resume in her fifth straight qualification to the National Finals Breakaway Roping.
“It’s still pretty hard to wrap your head around,” Munsell said in late January. “There was a lot of craziness that led up to it.”
Yes, there was. She won RodeoHouston and earned $70,000 for that, then won the Reno (Nevada) Rodeo for the second straight year. In November, the equine herpesvirus changed everything. The breakaway finals was postponed, then moved from Las Vegas to Fort Worth nine days after the National Finals Rodeo instead of two days prior.
“We were all practicing with a purpose, but an unforeseen purpose, because we didn’t know when or where we were going to have the finals,” she said. “Being in Fort Worth was super cool. They welcomed us with opening arms and put on a great show.”
Her life is considerably different than when she reigned over college rodeo. Breakaway roping has blossomed, and she’s been riding the wave. Munsell set the regular-season ($195,175) and season (209,021) earnings records in the WPRA. She’ll always be a world champion, but 2025 is already in her rearview mirror.
“The day after the NFR, the standings had already updated top 2026, so it’s pretty easy for me to stay motivated,” Munsell said. “After winning the world title, I was pretty motivated to keep the ball rolling. Nobody’s done it twice, so that would be a cool thing, but at the end of the day, it’s all the same for me: I’ve got to win to pay my bills.”
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Photo by Kristen Schurr
