SE Athletics
Matt Thomas, Sports Information Director
CASPER, Wyo. – Southeastern’s team roping duo of Dalton Titsworth and Kolton White earned the Team Roping National Championship at the 2019 CNFR, helping the Savage Storm men’s team to a fifth-place national finish on Saturday night in Casper, Wyo.
The fifth-place team finish is the best for the men’s squad since the 2009 season when they were runner-up in the team standings.
Individually, Titwsorth and White become SE’s first national champions since Denver Berry took home the 2017 steer wrestling title.
The pair also pick up Southeastern’s fourth all-time team roping national championship, with the last one earned by Kolton Schmidt in 2015 as the header. The last completely SE duo to win the title were Ryan Von Ahn and Trevor Connoly in 2009.
The pair posted an 8.1 in the final run which was good for third in the round, but only needed to clock a time of 10.6 or better in the final round to take home the title, ultimately doing so with a 2.6 second lead over second-place in the average.
Will Martin got off to a rough start and was awarded a reride on his first attempt in the finals, but his luck did not improve as he was bucked before the buzzer and was forced to take a no score and finishing 13th in the round and 13th overall in the average.
By earning a trip to the finals Martin, who was already in rare company as a four-time CNFR qualifier, joins an even rarer group of competitors who have qualified for the CNFR Finals in three-straight years.
He posted a sixth-place finish in the bareback in 2017 and an eighth-place finish last season in the same event.
Southeastern finishes the week with the best team finish of the Central Plains region teams, finishing 35 points ahead of Panhandle State in seventh and more than 200 ahead of Northwestern Oklahoma State in 13th.