When 2025 NFR barrel racing first-timer Katelyn Scott talks about chaos, she doesn’t shy away from it.
“Chaos doesn’t make a person. It reveals a person,” she said, smiling at the irony of what the 2024 ProRodeo season became.
That truth defined the year she clawed her way from the bubble into her first National Finals Rodeo—landing in the No. 15 spot with $130,763.76 across 95 rodeos after one of the most hard-fought late-season runs of the year. Through every muddy, sleepless, faith-filled mile, Scott stayed steady. She calls it peace. Others might call it grit.
“I wasn’t staring at the standings like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to do this,’” she said. “I just had so much peace—and that peace, not worrying about the outcome, it only comes from the Lord.”
Built in the Arena
All Katelyn Lide-Scott has ever known is horses.
Growing up in West Texas, she entered everything.
“I worked all the events—roping, cutting, team roping, poles, goat tying,” she said. “I made the CNFR twice in the goat tying and once in breakaway.”
She won pole bending at the Texas High School Finals, then went on to Odessa College and later Eastern New Mexico University, making the college finals in multiple events.
And her rodeo bloodlines run deep. Her great-aunt Margaret Owens Montgomery was the first president of the Girls Rodeo Association—the organization that became today’s WPRA—tying her story back to the sport’s very roots.
Her parents—a small animal veterinarian and a barrel horse trainer— shaped her discipline. “My mom installed that ‘get-up-and-take-care-of-things’ mindset,” she said. “And my dad once told me, ‘Do you ever hear me complain about going to work? That’s because I love what I do.’ It stuck. I still complain sometimes,” she laughed, “but I love what I do.”
The Long Road Back
Her professional start came with a sentimental twist. Although Lide-Scott had the opportunity to ride multiple horses trained by her mother growing up, she hit a lull in high school and swapped arena ends before coming back to barrel racing.
“I always wanted to get back to it,” Scott said. “I just wasn’t very good. But I was blessed with friends who let me lease good horses, and I stayed competitive.”
Then came Live From New York, a big purchase for Scott as a young adult. He came from Sue Barrington, and was an own son of Corona Cartel out of a Bully Bullion daughter.
“I ran him at a (WPRA approved jackpot) breast cancer fundraiser and filled my permit on him,” Scott said. “Sue passed away from breast cancer and he was one of her last horses, so it was bittersweet.”
She married her husband, Cody Scott, and built a small training program that kept her close to horses. By 2018 she was placing at major rodeos like Cheyenne and Pendleton—but in 2019, tragedy reset everything.
“I had a really good horse that I thought was going to take to the rodeos, and he hung his leg in the fence,” she said. “I had to put him down. I knew the Lord was doing something different in my life. I wasn’t sure what that looked like, but it was definitely different.”
She went home to the ranch, rebuilt, and spent the next few seasons at smaller rodeos. “It was leveling me back out at the bottom,” she said. “We’ve had to level back up every step since then.”
The Horses That Changed Everything
By 2023, opportunity knocked again. Letta Trouble Doit put her back in the conversation—until knee surgery sidelined him. Then her sister, Lorissa Jo Merritt, suggested a gelding she wasn’t keen on.
“I told my sister I wasn’t interested,” Scott laughed. “He looked slow to me. He picked his feet up too high off the ground. I didn’t think he could run. He’s one of the fastest horses I’ve ever ridden.”
That was Streak N Liza—Twiz—and he carried her through early 2024 and into 2025, qualifying for the Calgary Stampede and setting her season up the right way.
Then, a mystery injury took him out.
Although her mare Watchthefreakfly, “Baby Cakes,” carried the team through success in arenas like the 2024 Turquoise Circuit Finals, she couldn’t handle the road alone.
But Lorissa found another answer: a yellow gelding named Justa DTF Frenchman or Peanut, now known as “Peanut Seed.”
“We didn’t change his name—we just added Seed because my sister told me, ‘This may not take the faith of a mustard seed. It may be the size of a peanut seed,’” Scott said.
Peanut Seed became the breakout star she never see coming.
Peace in the Pressure
Her season turned at Caldwell, Idaho, where she and Peanut Seed found their stride. She’d battled small mistakes all summer, but that week everything clicked. She won the rodeo—her first major victory of the year—and it shifted the entire trajectory of her season.
“Right after Caldwell, I started feeling like I was on a roll,” she said. “It was fun again. I was just enjoying getting to run my horses.”
Then came the final-quarter battle. She pulled into Mandan, North Dakota, just weeks before the end of the season—a rodeo run in mud thick enough to test anyone’s faith.
“Mandan was stressful because of the mud,” she said. “It wasn’t a fair rodeo. Each girl ran in a different rodeo every day.”
Still, she kept her composure. When she backed down the alley that night, she said it felt like being back at a junior rodeo—just her, the horse, and a whole lot of sloppy mud. She split second there for $10,027, then rolled that momentum through rodeos like Omaha, Tyler, Pasadena, the California run and back to Stephenville to close it out, placing or winning at seven rodeos during the final 10 days of the season.
“I told the Lord I wanted to know whether I needed to go [West] or not,” she said. “After Tyler, I knew I needed to go. That was such a fun trip—Jana Bean picked me up at the airport, and it just felt like old times going down the road.”
Through it all, she says, she carried peace. “It was such a great place to be. I find that hard sometimes,” she said. “But that month—it was sweet. Every run was fun.”
The Moment It Sank In
After placing deep in Las Cruces during the final weekend, she knew.
Despite the bubble war going on at the Governor’s Cup in Sioux Falls¸—the rodeo everybody was watching—she’d all but mathematically locked up her position by pounding the pavement.
By the way, that cowgirl, Halyn Lide, who locked in her 2025 NFR qualification in Sioux Falls with a big win? Yes, that is Katelyn Lide-Scott’s sister-in-law.
“I knew that night I’d set myself up really good,” Scott said. “Every day it becomes a little more real. I think it’ll really set in when I’m going down that tunnel for the first time.”
Her husband Cody has become her right-hand man—answering texts, emails, and calls while she prepares horses and gear. “He’s literally been on my phone doing all the things because I don’t do that,” she laughed.
What happened after October 1?
Back home in Texas, Scott traded rodeo mud for pasture dust.
“As soon as I got home, we had to ship calves,” she said. “My husband bet me a hundred dollars I couldn’t rope this old roping steer with huge horns—and I got that hundred dollars.”
Ranch life is a for sure way to make sure life stays grounded outside of competition, even when it’s something as simple as catching a steer. “There’s a sense of accomplishment when you produce a result,” she said. “People won’t see it, but it’s that feeling of, ‘Yeah, I still got it.’ But nothing I did in the arena matters out here.”
Faith and Fellowship
Scott credits a close friend who prays with her before nearly every run for helping her through the 2025 season. “She’s my lifeline,” Scott said. “She’s the best person I know. She keeps me grounded and keeps me growing in my relationship with God.”
When asked what she hopes people remember, her answer was simple:
“In five years, people may not remember that Katelyn Scott made the NFR. And that’s okay. But I hope that they remember me as somebody who saw them, who always had time to share knowledge, and who reached out a hand to help when they were down. This sport isn’t about wins and losses for me, it’s about the people we meet along the way. It’s that fellowship, those connections we make, and the blessing that it is to do what we love.”
Katelyn Scott
Ready for Vegas
Her trailer is loaded: Peanut Seed, Streak N Liza (Twiz), and her young backup, Heaven Sent Fame.
After years of detours, heartbreak, and faith-driven patience, the woman who once wondered if her time had passed is finally headed down the Thomas & Mack alley.
“I love what I do,” she said. “I love the horses. I love how they’ve connected me to people I never would’ve met otherwise.”
When Katelyn Scott bursts into the Thomas & Mack this December, it won’t just be a debut.
It’ll be a revelation—the calm after chaos, and the faith that carried her there.