When you chat with Wyatt Jensen, something shines through clearer than sunlight through a stained-glass window. The guy is all about rodeo.

Jensen, a rising senior at Snake River, doesn’t just live and breathe rodeo. It’s more accurate to say he embodies it. For Jensen, it’s a year-round venture, a hobby that has transformed into a lifestyle across the last several years.

“He eats, sleeps and drinks rodeo,” said Wayne, his father. “We rope 365 days a year. I think last year, we took 21 days off.”

Wait, for the whole year?

“For the whole year,” Wayne said.

In that way, nothing about Wyatt’s approach to rodeo comes at a surprise, especially not his District 4 state title in tie-down roping at Saturday’s state finals at Pocatello Downs. He’s a rodeo guy in every sense. He doesn’t even play other sports on the side — not football, not basketball, nothing.

It’s all rodeo. Which is why his state title meant so much to him.

“I don’t know it’s really sunk in yet,” Jensen said. “It’s pretty exciting. Last year, I missed a couple here, but we came back and worked hard, and it was good.”

The reason why Jensen’s title was so gratifying to him is just that: He doesn’t have many other hobbies. He practices around five to six nights a week. He buys his own calves. “A lot of hours in the practice pen,” he says, and he’s hardly exaggerating.

Start with this: Wayne recalled one day in February when he and Wyatt traveled to Wyoming to practice roping calves.

“In 16 below zero to practice,” Wayne said. “So people don’t understand the hours that you spend in the arena and out of the arena, roping bale and doing all those kinds of things. It’s a lot… Once he decides he’s gonna do something, he’s 1000% committed — sometimes to a fault.”

Sometimes Wyatt will practice in Fort Hall, other times in Blackfoot. Sometimes with his friends, sometimes with only his dad. The constant is this: He practices a lot. Maybe that’s nothing uncommon for dedicated kids, especially ones who make one sport their sole focus, but it’s colored so much of Wyatt’s experience.

It almost makes you wonder: Did he ever think about trying anything else?

“Nope,” he laughs. “I didn’t even try them.”

Before he had a chance to try out for high school sports, Jensen became a junior-high rodeo kid. “I’ve been hooked ever since,” Jensen says. Immediately, the decision paid dividends. He advanced to the junior high nationals. As a freshman at Snake River, he and partner Boedy Thompson secured a spot at the high school nationals in team roping. Last year, he says, “didn’t quite work out.”

So perhaps that had something to do with the fact that this year did. Jensen is moving on to next month’s national finals in Gillette, Wyoming — the same state where he slogged through those below-zero temperatures for this opportunity.

“I’m just gonna get in the practice pen, hopefully rope the best I can,” Jensen said. “Just have fun over there. It’s always a blast at high school nationals.”