Cheyanne McCartney leads the 2026 WPRA breakaway roping world standings by more than $40,000, and the two of the most credentialed ropers in the sport give the same answer for why—she does it correctly.

The Kingston, Oklahoma, cowgirl has $163,726 won after the first week of August, $40,622 clear of No. 2 Hali Williams. She won $69,500 at the Calgary Stampede, the biggest check of her career, then banked $28,849 in a single week that included the Cheyenne Frontier Days title.

In May she won $68,566 at the Gold Buckle Futurity in Ardmore, Oklahoma and in July she swept both breakaway divisions at Old West’s Heber City Futurity.

• Cheyanne McCartney Keeps Rolling with $28K Week and Cheyenne Title
• Storybook Ending: Cheyanne McCartney Wins $69,500 at Calgary, Moves to Projected No. 1 in the World
• Cheyanne McCartney Wins Both Breakaway Divisions at Old West’s Heber City—Hez Talkin Smack in the 6-&-Under, Thiccthirty in the 4-&-Under

Two men who have spent their lives around ropes have been watching all of it. Neither one credited luck as the explanation to her success.

Two Ways to Win

Giddings, Texas’ Justin Maass turned pro in 1996, qualified for eight Wrangler NFRs and passed $1 million in career earnings. He was the PRCA Reserve World Champion tie-down roper in 2012 and is the only cowboy to win back-to-back PRCA/AQHA Tie-Down Horse of the Year awards on two different horses. Retired from ProRodeo, he now trains and teaches full-time out of Maass Performance Horses and coaches for Roping.com.

Though Maass has never roped with McCartney before, he knows her husband, Cody, well and watches her anyway.

“There’s two different styles of winners in the breakaway now,” Maass said. “There’s the ones that just can throw it to the end and have that style, the bombers as I like to call them. And then there’s that group that really ride their horses and really hit the barrier. And she’s in the latter of those two. She rides her horses so good and she scores so good.”

The distinction matters more at some rodeos than others, and it mattered a great deal at the two biggest ones she just won.

“Did y’all watch Calgary? Because the girls that won, they’re riding their horses and their angles had to be so good, because those calves were running so hard and the barrier was long enough where it was kind of a scoring and riding contest as much as it was roping,” Maass said. “The Cheyenne rodeo is the same way. When you have to score and you have to ride your horse, it just sets the girls like Cheyanne McCartney apart from some of the others, because she’s just so good at that part of it.”

The Angle

Ask Maass to get technical and he goes straight to the delivery.

“I’m big on the delivery being at a downward angle,” he said. “I use the words up and forward a lot.”

“She’s up off the seat of her saddle riding her horses. And her angle is over the top just a little, maybe just a little higher and a little more over the top, but her delivery angle is down. And that’s what I preach all the time. You have to deliver your rope at a downward angle where it hits the neck going down to get your figure eight to come up over the top. And she does that.”

That angle is why she is not roping ears or waving one off.

“When it hits at that angle, that’s not going to catch a leg or a tail or anything like that,” Maass said. “Figure eight comes right up behind the calf’s neck. There’s nothing there that causes no time.”

There is a phrase he keeps circling back to.

“She is fundamentally sound,” Maass said. “And that wins in anything, really and truly. When you’re fast, it’s great. But when you’re fundamentally sound, it’s going to conquer at the end, in my opinion.”

He also thinks the belief finally caught up to the ability.

“She’s finally gotten to where she believes that she’s as good as what it looks like to me,” Maass said. “You get to winning, you get on a roll like she’s been on, and it just seems like you throw your rope up in the air and it’s going to come down around one’s neck.”

Joe Beaver Has Been Watching Since She Was a Kid

Joe Beaver’s resume is the one the sport measures others against. Eight world championships—five in tie-down roping (1985, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993) and three all-around (1995, 1996, 2000)—22 NFR qualifications, and a 2000 induction into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

He is also family to McCartney, and it shows. Ask him about her roping and he starts twenty years before it.

“It always goes back to where it started,” Beaver said. “She roped and roped really good as a kid, and her dad was a student of the game. Carl, he watched, he picked the best of everybody and tried to put it in her. And Carl did a great job of building a mentally tough person to compete in whatever she competed in.”

She quit for a stretch and played softball—a season Beaver considers in her success.

“I think that showed her being able to change gears completely and be successful in that as well,” he said. “So, when you go look at the year she’s having now and you look back on her different endeavors, I think it shows how mentally strong she can be at the right time.”

The Fourth of July Slump

Her large success this summer hasn’t been without its challenges.

“Cheyanne went from missing five out of six over the Fourth to winning probably $80,000 since the Fourth,” Beaver said. “So it’s not like it was all cakes and candles. We had some long conversations over the Fourth and some ‘oh my gosh’ moments.”

Beaver’s fix was to make it simple.

“I even made a joke. I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you find something to stand on, throw a loop down over a bale of hay? If it catches, you’re ready for Calgary,’” he said. “Just make it simple, because things aren’t working. And it took one run to turn things around, and she’s been able to ride that wave and still riding it today.”

He also offered her technical advice and she took it.

“Over the Fourth I thought she was a little behind, and I thought she was trying to throw from the back of the saddle,” Beaver said. “And then after a couple more, we watched the video, she’s like, ‘I’m behind, I’m behind, I’m behind.’ I said, ‘No, you’re not behind. You’re just throwing from behind. You’re getting there, but you’re not staying there.’ And man, once she changed that, she’s deadly.”

“But she don’t glorify or sugarcoat nothing, good or bad,” he said. “She doesn’t take any excuse or make one. She wants to win.”

Three Things in the Rope Bag

When Beaver broke down the technical side of her roping, he had three points.

“She has a really good left hand. She has a really good big handshake delivery out of her last swing where she doesn’t change. And she is not afraid at all to try the barrier on,” he said. “If you’ve got those three things in your rope bag, you can win in any situation.”

He walks through why each one tracks.

“The left hand is if major importance in the big arenas where you have to go catch them and cut them off,” Beaver said. “It’s also of major importance at the fast ropings when you hit the barrier to get crossed over. Your scoring ability—you’ve got to have the guts to take the starts to win. And she does that. She knows how to score at Cheyenne, and she knows how to score at Idaho Falls, where it’s they go, you go.”

The unchanging delivery is what lets her get on any horse and still have success.

“If you watch, she gets by the colts at the futurities—the young horses, the green horses—she gets by them so good because she doesn’t change her last swing,” he said. “It’s her first swing and her delivery that don’t change. And that’s what people don’t get. They change after the first swing, or their first swing’s not right and they change it for the delivery, or their first swing happens to be right, and they change the last swing. Those two things will kill you.”

The Whole Pie

Ask either man what she does best and the answer is the same: everything.

“She ropes so good, but ropes in so many different areas—the futurities, the rodeos, the jackpots,” Beaver said. “She’s a rounded winner. She’s the whole pie. She’s not a piece that wins at the rodeos mainly, a piece that wins at the futurities mainly, a piece that’s jackpot dominant. She’s the whole pie.”

The reason, he said, is a rule the two of them repeat to each other.

“We always talk about rope for money,” Beaver said. “Whatever the setup is, adapt.”

Horsepower

Neither man shorts the horses. Maass sees the McCartneys as part of a small group that formed as the breakaway money grew.

“It’s just one of those teams that comes together, like the Meged’s, Riley and Josie, Shane and Taylor,” Maass said. “There’s a certain little old group of them that seem like, since the breakaway has gotten so big, they’ve really taken advantage of the ability that they have.”

What separates the McCartneys inside that group is that they make the horses, too. Maass calls what they have built “arguably a top five program for sure, if not top two or three, maybe the best in some aspects.”

“They’re starting with really good quality animals that are broke correctly, and they just are phenomenal at what they do, her and Cody both,” Maass said. “They have customers that are sending them great prospects and they’re buying great prospects. They know where to look, they know where to find them, they know what they’re looking for. And then they just take them from babies all the way to first in the world.”

He thinks the economics pulled it out of them.

“I think the fact that there’s more ways to make money at it probably has incentivized it a lot more, where they want to do so good at it and they want to make those horses so good—because now you can make money with them from the time, they’re four until they’re retired,” Maass said. “I mean, you actually can make a living doing it.”

Beaver put the division of labor plainly.

“Cody does a great job of keeping the horses,” he said. “We got three or four horses right now. We try to keep them in the right spot at the right time. And Cody keeps them tuned and ready and fresh.”

The Part That Isn’t Mechanics

“She’s a very gracious winner. She is not a good loser, which I understand, but she’s not over the top the other way either,” he said. “She knows when it’s not good. She fixes it.”

And she asks, which he says most winners never learn to do.

“Everybody’s got to have somebody, another set of eyes to help. But a lot of people don’t take advantage of a set of eyes when they have them,” Beaver said. “You fight to get to where you’re at and you’re a winner. You don’t want to hear it from somebody else. But if you’re smart enough to take it—whether it be me or whoever—I don’t care if it’s Ronald McDonald. If Ronald McDonald can help sell a cheeseburger and help Cheyanne win Hermiston, then I want her to talk to Ronald McDonald.”

There Is No Hole

Maass, who has now watched her win at the futurities and at the rodeos on the same weekends, has quit looking for the hole.

“I feel like, man, she’s won everywhere she’s been this year,” he said. “It’s like the same person winning everywhere. I joke all the time—when’s everybody else going to quit entering?”

Then he reached for the only comparison in roping right now that carries the same weight.

“It’s getting Riley Webb-ish, to be honest with you,” Maass said. “How do you beat them?”