story by Michele Toberer
After speaking with Louisiana cowboy, Coy Baxter, it’s immediately apparent that this 16-year-old high-school sophomore has roping on his mind both day and night. His passion for riding horses started early, as he remembers riding his father’s team roping horse, Peanut, when he was just two years old. Peanut was the horse that also taught Coy’s brothers, 13-year-old Cade, and 10-year-old Carson, to ride, and he was a wonderful family asset until two years ago when he went on to greener pastures in the sky. Coy’s parents, Jennifer and Christopher, raise their three sons in the rodeo lifestyle in Ethel, Louisiana, where Christopher is a construction project manager, and Jennifer is a stay at home mother. Coy has been homeschooled since 6th grade and enjoys his online curriculum, as well as the flexibility it provides his schedule. His favorite subject is History, and he especially likes learning about the cowboy culture and way of life.
In 2014, Coy qualified for the National Little Britches Finals Rodeo, as a heeler; and in 2015 as a ribbon-roper, breakaway roper, and heeler, where he finished as the 2015 National Finals 4th place heeler. As a 6th-grader, Coy began competing in the Louisiana Junior High Rodeo Association, and spent all three years as a LJHSRA competitor; as his brother Cade is now doing. Currently, Coy is competing for his second-year in the Louisiana High School Rodeo Association. As a team roper, Coy has always preferred heeling to heading, but as many team ropers need to do, he has switched ends over the past few years, depending on partners. A sorrel quarter horse, named Pee Wee, is Coy’s main heel horse that he’s ridden since 2012, “I get along so well with him, I can practically rope on him with my eyes closed, because we know each other so well.” This year, in the LHSRA rodeos, he started out heading on a partner’s horse, until the last 5 or 6 rodeos, where he has been able to head on his new rope horse, named Red. “Red is pretty much the twin of Pee Wee as far as looks, he’s 8-years-old, and just like Pee Wee, we get along great.”
A typical day for Coy includes completing schoolwork, roping the dummy, helping Cade rope calves, and then loading up Pee Wee and Red to go team rope at a nearby roping pen. He doesn’t usually have a lot of spare time for much else, especially in the spring, when his time begins to get split as he gets very busy working crawfish ponds. He works alongside a crew of four other guys that pull traps from the ponds and package the crawfish in sacks for sale. Once the spring-season begins, he often works six days per week, unless it’s a rodeo weekend, when he works a 4-day-week, and then heads out for the rodeo. What he loves about the LHSRA is that the junior high rodeos are held on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and the high school rodeos on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, so he gets to spend the entire weekend hanging out with his friends and family.
There are many ropers that have influenced Coy in his life and in roping. He’s been fortunate to have had the opportunities to rope at team roping clinics with Rickey Green and Allen Bach. Coy enjoyed watching roper Jr. Dees at the WNFR in Las Vegas this past December, and he is grateful that he had the chance to rope with him at many NLBRA jackpots in 2015. There are local cowboys that Coy is grateful for, like Judd Corkern and Remy Forbes that have given Coy lots of time and direction in his roping. Above all, he appreciates and looks up to his dad, “I’d like to grow up and be like him. He pushes me to be better than him.”
For the future, Coy hopes to continue team roping, and possibly start steer wrestling. He is considering attending college at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, when the time comes, and would love to rodeo in college while learning the skills necessary to become a welder, and someday manage his own cattle operation.
