At just 10 years old, Gallatin Gateway’s Rowyn O’Meara set the Lone Mountain Ranch rodeo’s adult barrel racing record, and she’s just getting started
By Annie O’Neill EDITORIAL INTERN
Rowyn O’Meara was 3 years old the first time she got on a horse, and she’s refused to get off one since.
Her mother, Lisa O’Meara, remembers trying to call her in for dinner. Rowyn, trotting circles around their property in Gallatin Gateway, had other plans.
“Mom, you can go cook dinner,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She stayed out until dark.
Seven years later, that refusal to quit has turned into one of the most dominant young careers on the region’s youth rodeo circuit. Rowyn, now 10, has spent this season riding the Tuesday night rodeos at Lone Mountain Ranch, where she recently posted a time of 14.901 seconds in barrel racing, the fastest women’s time run at the venue in six years, against a field of adult competitors.
Lisa hadn’t expected the record going in.
“I just wanted her to go out and have a clean run,” she said. “And then they took the time, and we was like, that’s the new run. What happened? Oh my gosh.” For Rowyn, it’s just one entry in a season that already includes more than 40 rodeos.
She started competing at 5 years old, when Lisa took her to her first youth rodeo. Since then, the family has built a summer around the circuit: youth rodeos most weekends, a horse trailer with living quarters so they can camp out for two-day events, and, this year, Rowyn’s first season of junior high rodeo. Now in fifth grade, Rowyn is homeschooled, a decision Lisa said was made partly to give the family the flexibility to keep pace with her daughter’s ambition.
“We just have more time, more flexibility for her to do this kind of thing,” Lisa said. It also means more time on the horses, and less time on a screen. “None of these [rodeo] kids are staring at a screen,” Lisa said. “They are just outside all day long.”
Rowyn’s main event is barrel racing, though she also competes in breakaway roping and has a soft spot for goat tying. Watching her ride, Lisa says, is watching someone who takes the sport more seriously than most kids her age ever do—seriously enough that Lisa has occasionally had to remind her she’s allowed to just have fun. Rowyn has always pushed herself, and by her mother’s account, the field isn’t about the competition.
“It’s a competition against herself,” Lisa said. “Making sure she’s got a clean run.”
That standard has produced results that outpace her opponents. Last year, Rowyn won the all-around title at Lone Mountain Ranch, which included a saddle and a belt buckle. This year also included a win at a barrel race in Three Forks, in what became one of her favorite runs. The rain was pouring, and Rowyn was soaked and shivering by the time her turn came. Lisa remembers telling her she didn’t need to push it.
“This doesn’t have to be your fastest run. Just go out there and have a clean run,” Lisa recalled telling her daughter. Rowyn ran her fastest time to that point in her career, beat a full field of adult and professional riders, and won the race outright along with a $545 prize. Then came the record at Lone Mountain Ranch later this summer, on June 26, when she beat out a field of experienced adult riders.
Much of that success has ridden on the back of one horse: Boone, a barrel horse with an unlikely backstory of his own. A family friend originally bought him lame and overweight, the result of an earlier owner’s neglect. He needed a light, confident rider who could exercise him safely, and Rowyn, fearless according to Lisa, took on the job despite Boone’s reputation for being intimidating for other kids to handle.
She rode him nearly every day for a month while the family arranged for special shoes and veterinary care. By the time he had recovered, the family had grown too attached to let him go, and bought him. Lisa said the decision to take on a lame horse was a gamble, but it’s one that’s paid off. Boone, Lisa says, has “just been the sweetest,” and now, he’s a horse that helps break records.
“He’s just so gentle,” Rowyn said. “He loves his job. He gets pumped to go around the barrels.”
Little Rowyn’s career has unfolded, week after week, in front of the same small hometown audience: her younger brother, Kayden, who competes in his own events in junior barrels and breakaway roping; her grandfather, who has attended dozens of rodeos this year despite a hip replacement, and family friends who rarely miss a Tuesday night at Lone Mountain Ranch. The family’s horses are part of that world too. Alongside Boone are horses Sadie and Riot. “They’re just another member of the family,” Lisa said.
For a Gallatin Gateway kid, it’s a striking bit of hometown recognition. Rowyn appeared on the cover of Condé Nast Traveler’s July/August issue, representing the very Lone Mountain Ranch where she now sets records against competitors more than five times her age.
Asked what she thinks about in the middle of a run, Rowyn doesn’t have much of an answer. She zones out, she says, so completely that Lisa isn’t always sure she can hear instructions called from the rail.
“I get butterflies in my belly,” Rowyn said of the moments before a run, the same feeling now that she had at 5. Once she’s in the arena, it comes down to instinct: “Finish second, check in before first …Focus on one barrel at a time,” she tells herself. What that looks like in practice is tight, controlled turns, and not knocking barrels along the way.
For now, there’s no sign of her career slowing down. Though Lone Mountain Ranch’s 2026 rodeo season ended in September, the offseason won’t likely keep Rowyn out of the saddle for long. Asked what it feels like to beat riders twice her age and size, she doesn’t overthink it either.
“It feels pretty good,” she said, shrugging.
If this year is any indication, next season’s field of competitors, adult, professional, or otherwise, should probably be on notice.
