Three Idaho-grown rodeo stars are making an impact after two of them finished No. 1 in team roping and another placed first in tie-down roping during the fall season.

Will Cutler, 21, grew up on a ranch in Grace, Idaho, and has been team roping as a pastime during much of his adolescence, practicing with horses and cattle.

Cutler was involved in high school rodeos during his entire high school career, and when he graduated, Cutler desired to continue pursuing rodeos at the collegiate level and joined the local Idaho State University rodeo team.

Cutler attributes a lot of his success to the help he’s received from people who have grown his skills at roping and horsemanship over the years, but it’s his unique connection with his fellow roping partner that was instrumental to his recent first-place finish.

McCammon native Cole Gunter, 19, has been involved in the rodeo lifestyle much of his life, due in part to his family’s long history and participation in the sport. The success of his family in the professional circuit put Gunter on a similar path as early as middle school, where he would spend time with Cutler in amateur rodeos and growing their rapport together.

“We’ve run thousands of cows over the course of our lives,” Cutler said. “We grew up together roping and it’s really easy to have a good game plan all the time and a good dynamic with your partner when you have things like that going for you. That’s been really helpful as well this year.”

The dynamic relationship between Cutler and Gunter helped the pair achieve a level of unmatched synergy, using the years of running steers together as a founding part of their success.

“I would say that running that many steers with a guy makes it easy in that sense,” Cutler said. “We’re really good friends and we can help each other through the bad. The first two rodeos we had this fall weren’t super good, but we had run enough that Cole knows what I’m going to do — he can read the play so well. He knows what I’m going to do, I know what he’s going to do. It makes it super easy to have a winning run, a base run that we can go back to if things aren’t working now. We can go back to what we know works and has worked for years for us.”

Both Cutler and Gunter achieved a first-place finish in team roping during this most recent rodeo season and Cutler believes their success was born out of the high level of competition in the area.

“Our region is very tough this year compared to other years, in the sense that there’s five or six teams that can definitely win,” Cutler said. “We won out at the last rodeo and are ultimately sitting at No, 1. The competition was really good, and in rodeo, I think it’s super easy to get in your own way, so (competing against) some good teams almost jars you loose. You don’t have time to think about it — you’re on the unconscious side of the mind when you’re competing at that high of a level and it makes it easier for me to trust myself and trust my horse. I would attribute a lot of the accomplishments this last year or this last fall season to just good competition.”

The pair’s rodeo season is only half over, with an additional five rodeos set for sometime in the spring. They will be off for three or more months and will likely head down to Arizona to team rope together during the winter to stay sharp and be ready for the spring.

A former graduate of Highland High School has also made waves in the Intermountain West rodeo region and has a storied history of winning.

Cooper Duffin, 23, attends Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Duffin is a member of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association and currently leads the nation in tie-down standings, better known as calf roping.

“My whole family is rodeo,” Duffin said. “My dad grew up doing it in high school and college. My sisters have rodeoed, so I guess it’s just been a family thing. I grew up doing it, rodeoed in junior high, won a couple of state championships in middle school, won a national championship in eighth grade, then continued to high school where I won a state championship and went to the nationals three years. Then last year was my first year in college rodeo, I qualified for the National Finals Rodeo and ended up sixth in the world at nationals.”

While having a family that is focused on rodeo certainly contributes to Duffin’s successes, much of his skill comes from a natural talent and the time he has dedicated to honing and improving his skill set.

“A lot of it is also due to the amount of practice I put into it, getting up early to tie calves from the post, or roping the dummy for hours a day or the countless YouTube videos I’ve watched and tried to implement,” Duffin said. “I think it’s a lot of it combined together. A big part of it is doing the little things, not just focusing on roping or horsemanship, but also the gym and just finding any ways to get ahead.”

While rodeo plays an integral part in all three of these rodeo stars’ lives, they are also making sure they get a quality education during their respective journeys.

Cutler is finishing up a bachelor’s in accounting at ISU and desires to follow that up with a two-year technical degree in welding.

Duffin’s focus has shifted from the National Finals Rodeo circuit to further developing his skills and pursuing a degree as a physician’s assistant, while still working within the rodeo realm training and raising horses.

Gunter spent a semester at University of Montana Western in Dillon, but made the decision to come participate in the ISU rodeo team last spring and wants to compete in the professional scene early to get experience and a taste for the competition.

“I’d like to pro rodeo next summer a little bit, go to some of the smaller ones and just try and see how I stack up against some of those guys,” Gunter said. “There’s a lot of guys around here that rope at a super high level, so (I’d like to) try and be in that environment and see how it stacks up and go from there.”