Oregon State tight end Cody Siegner caps decorated high school rodeo career

One last ride.

Oregon State

freshman tight end Cody Siegner completed a decorated high school rodeo career with his best-ever finish at

national competition

, placing seventh in the NHSRA world rankings for team roping alongside best friend and longtime roping partner Tommy Jack Rose.

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Siegner and Rose finished seventh after posting times of 5.89 and 6.29 seconds over their final two runs. The event, also known as calf roping, involves two riders on horseback chasing after and lassoing the head and back legs of a calf.

Siegner and Rose have been roping partners since the age of five, and finished their high school career with a third Oregon state championship in four years before advancing to nationals.

“Really just made it all worth it,” Siegner said. “I would have been pretty disappointed if I went through all that and we just ended up not doing very good. The little bit of success we had made those three trips worth it.”

Siegner’s mother, Jamie, coordinated three long trips to make everything work for her son with OSU fall camp approaching.

For the first day of national rodeo competition, Siegner started by driving to Eugene. He flew from Eugene to Denver, was delayed in Denver for more than three and a half hours, and landed in Rock Springs around 1:30 a.m. — just a few hours before his first run with Tommy Jack.

As soon as they finished, Siegner hopped in a rented pickup truck and drove nearly three hours to Salt Lake City, where he flew to Portland and then Eugene before driving back up to Corvallis.

He worked out with the Beavers for a few days before heading down to Eugene again, flying to Salt Lake City, and driving the same rented pickup truck from Salt Lake City back to Rock Springs, where he and Rose finished strong over a two-day span. He rode in the car home with his parents 10 hours from Rock Springs to the family’s ranch near Crane in Eastern Oregon.

“It was a real pain,” Siegner said. “But me and Tommy Jack, our whole life together roping, that was a great way to cap it off. Doing good at nationals is always the goal.”

In the process, Rose earned reserve all-around honors after also competing in other events like steer wrestling and tie-down roping. The Siegner family was overjoyed, having grown even closer with the Roses in the years after the death of Tommy Jack’s older brother, John Barry, in a car accident when he and Cody were kids.

“It just shows what we already knew about him, which is that he’s really good at all of the events he does,” Siegner said of Rose’s reserve all-around honors. “It just proved to the rest of the outside world, on that big stage, how good he really is.”

A friendship blossomed into a brotherhood, and ended with a unique and strenuous commitment to finishing what they started. Rose is off to Treasure Valley Community College with dreams of a professional rodeo career, while Siegner is back in Corvallis with just over a week until his first fall camp in college football.

“I’m loving it, honestly,” Siegner said. “I get along really well with all the other freshmen, and getting acquainted with all the guys on the team. Getting settled in, it’s been a pretty easy transition. I’ve really enjoyed it.”

—

Ryan Clarke

covers the Oregon State Beavers for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at RClarke@Oregonian.com or on Twitter/X:

@RyanTClarke

. Find him on Bluesky:

@ryantclarke.bsky.social

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