2025 WNFR: Derrick Begay, Colter Todd have so-so finals with fifth-place finish in average race

By Quentin Jodie
Navajo Times

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – With million-dollar payouts, the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo is the most sought out ticket for any rodeo contestant.

Every cowboy and cowgirl will do everything they can to make the finals as this year’s purse paid out over $13.5 million, which includes a $10,000 bonus for every contestant that made the NFR.

For Derrick Begay and Colter Todd, the pair did not have the finals they had hoped for. Nonetheless, they still left the Thomas & Mack Center with $72,394.

“Whatever we won this week is good, but on one hand it’s not much because we left a lot on the table,” Begay said. “We’re very grateful with what we’re taking home, but any time you come here, you want to try and do the best you can.

“This week was tough,” he added. “We didn’t do that good; we just never could get anything going. It’s not a lack of try, but it just didn’t work out.”

Begay says it could have been a lot worse had they not finish out the tenth round with the 4.2 run they posted during Saturday night’s finale. That last run put them a two-way tie for third with Clint Summers and Jade Corkill in the round. More importantly, it helped them to a fifth-place finish in the aggregate race as they roped eight of 10 draws in 56.6 seconds. In addition to the last round, they earned go round checks in the third and fifth round with sixth-place finishes of 4.2 and 5.3 seconds, respectively.

“As bad as we did, we were sitting fifth in the average, so tonight we wanted to hold our spot in the average,” Begay said. “We wanted to just catch, and we were lucky enough that we placed. We held our spot and that kind covered up what we didn’t win, so we get to go home on a good note.”

Todd agreed with his heading partner about leaving so much money on the table as there were nine teams that won more money than the Arizona cowboys headed by the team roping combo of Andrew Ward and Jake Long. The latter pair won the average by roping nine of 10 draws in 44.0 seconds as they won a whopping $224,783 at this year finals. That hefty payday moved them up six spots as they finished as the world champions with Ward’s season total coming in at $373,838 while Long finished at $372,091.

“I’m happy for them,” Todd said of the world champs. “But I did terrible. I did not rope good at all. I mean, I roped too many legs. I just didn’t get to the right spot to catch too feet.

“The main thing you want to do here is rope good,” he continued. “If I had caught every steer that he turned with two feet, then we would have won more money. I feel sick because I didn’t catch every single one of them.”

Still, the Wilcox cowboy was grateful of their 4.2 run they turned in on Saturday night.

“It wasn’t a fast run, but it was kind of like a soft round deal,” he said. “Luckily, it was a soft round because otherwise we wouldn’t have placed.

“As of tonight, I feel really good because we had to catch that steer to stay in the average, to stay where we were,” he added. “Obviously, if we didn’t rope, we weren’t going to win nothing.”

As a 12-time NFR qualifier, Begay believes this is one of the worst finals he’s had. Coming into this year’s NFR, the Seba Dalkai, Arizona cowboy had won the aggregate race the previous two years with Todd in 2023 and Jonathan Torres last year.

“I think the first year I qualified in 2008 was the maybe the worst,” Begay said. “That was a long time ago, but this year it feels like the worst because we had high hopes and big goals.”

One of those goals was to win another average title and, perhaps, win a world title as Begay came into the NFR at No. 3 while Todd was ranked No. 2.

“That’s always the plan, but there’s 10 steers, 10 nights,” Begay said. “There’s a lot of variables that happen, but, yeah, that’s what you want to do. We’ve done this long enough to know that sometimes things don’t work out.”

With their NFR winnings, the two cowboys finished the world in eighth place with Begay collecting $238,596 while Todd netted $236,244 for the 2025 season.

“I’m grateful for the year we had and I’m glad Colter stayed with me all year,” Begay said. “Overall, we had a good year. I want to thank the people that supported me throughout the year.”

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