Molly Salmond won $8,294 across three Montana rodeos in five days last week, the third-biggest week of anyone in professional breakaway roping, and it carried the cowgirl to the top of the Montana Circuit standings with $11,145.69 in 14 rodeos.
The week nearly tripled her season earnings. It was also the stretch she had circled—Montana front-loads its money in August, and Salmond knew what was in front of her.
“I had won some money coming into last week, but last week and then this upcoming week with Baker and Billings are two great weeks in Montana to win some money,” said the Choteau, Montana, cowgirl. “So, I wasn’t completely worried, but I was like, we got to do good now.”
Three Rodeos, Three Checks
The run didn’t start clean. At Missoula, Salmond drew a calf that got out from under her, and she left without a check.
“I didn’t draw a super great calf at Missoula. He was a little fast, so I was like, all right, we’ll go into Chinook,” she said.
Chinook was better. She tied for 10th with a 3.1 and picked up $417, and she’ll tell you she left time on the table.
“I drew a good calf, and I probably took one more swing than I needed to, but I still placed,” she said.
At Cascade, she won the rodeo with a 2.5 worth $2,773—a run she takes almost no credit for.
“God must have been looking out for me. My loop was awful, but it went around the neck,” she said.
Then came Bozeman, and the run that put her name in front of the whole country: a 1.5 for $5,104, the fastest breakaway run recorded anywhere in professional rodeo that week.
“My horse is made for a fast setup, so I did have a little confidence going in there, but I knew I needed to be fast to place,” she said. “And it just all kind of worked out.”
“I’m just super grateful for how I did and how my horse did, and I drew some really good calves,” she said. “I can’t complain about that.”
Roping Runs in the Family
Salmond grew up on the family ranch 25 miles outside Choteau, up against the Rocky Mountain Front. Her introduction to a rodeo arena predates her introduction to daylight.
“That’s kind of where I just got to ride horses basically from not even from the day I was born,” she said. “My mom made the circuit finals the year that she had me, and I got to run barrels in her belly.”
Both of her parents, Mark and Mary Salmond, rodeoed in high school and college, and her mother qualified for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in barrel racing. Mary Salmond also won four consecutive Northern Rodeo Association all-around titles from 1987 to 1990.
The standard didn’t stop with her parents. Salmond’s older sister, Celie, has won five straight NRA all-around cowgirl titles and went into the Montana Circuit Finals in Great Falls in January as the No. 1 breakaway roper in the circuit with $16,173.
The two of them travel together, and the rig has gotten fuller. Celie had a son, Miles, in February.
“I travel with my sister Celie, and she just had a baby this February,” Salmond said. “His name is Miles, so he usually comes along, and my mom’s been coming along too.”
“It’s super fun. Honestly, if you do bad and then you come back to the trailer and Miles is there and he’s smiling at you, it kind of makes everything feel not so bad anymore,” she said.
“And of course I have my sister there to help me with scoring or anything like that. My mom’s there. I get to ask her questions, and we all help each other drive,” she said. “So it’s really nice.”
A Blown ACL
For a kid with that pedigree, Salmond was a late convert. Rodeo was available to her; it just wasn’t the plan.
“I was never totally, fully into it. I really liked volleyball growing up,” she said. “And then I liked goat tying, until my junior year, I blew my ACL out, goat tying.”
The injury ended one event and pointed her at another.
“When that happened, I figured it was a sign from God that I needed to get better at breakaway roping,” she said. “I went to a clinic and started working hard on that.”
As a senior, she won the Montana state high school breakaway roping title.
Six Years a Bobcat
Salmond went on to Montana State, where she rodeoed four years as an undergraduate and then, after college athletes were given their COVID year back, stayed for two more while she worked on a master’s degree.
“I went six years at Montana State and made the college finals twice and ended up in the top four in the nation,” said the 27-year-old.
She finished with an undergraduate degree in human development and family science and a master’s in agricultural education.
The degrees aren’t what pay the bills. Salmond works for her father on the family ranch, and the summer rodeo schedule is something her boss signs off on.
“I would say my day job is working for my dad on our family ranch,” she said. “And then he lets us rodeo in the summer, my sister and I.”
That arrangement shapes how far the sisters go. They rope the Montana Circuit and the state’s amateur association and, for now, leave the interstate schedule to somebody else.
“We mainly just circuit rodeo, and then we go to the amateur rodeo association in Montana. We just kind of enjoy doing that,” she said. “If the stars aligned one year and everything went good, I would think maybe we would try and go out and rodeo more, but it just hasn’t quite aligned that way.”
The Barrel Prospect
The horse carrying her through this run is TS Famous French Bug, better known around the trailer as Puddles—a 14-hand gelding by the barrel-racing sire Famous Bugs. Salmond bought him as a 5-year-old from a woman living near Chinook, and she bought him for the wrong event.
“His dad is Famous Bugs, and I saw that, and I was like, oh, well, that would be a really great barrel prospect, because I like running barrels too,” she said.
The seller saw something else in him and said so.
“The gal that had him, she was like, I think he would make a really great breakaway horse,” Salmond said.
She spent a couple of years finding out the hard way.
“We’d place in the 1D, 2D, but just never really outstanding,” she said.
“I told my mom, I was like, I think I’m just going to rope off of him now. And she’s like, well, I think you should keep trying it out, like one more year,” Salmond said. “And I was like, no, he really doesn’t want to be a barrel horse. I think he wants to be a rope horse.”
The decision got made for her. Her senior year of college, the breakaway horse she was mounted on got hurt right before the first rodeo, and Puddles—she puts him at about 7 then—went in the box.
“We never looked back since,” she said.
“I truly owe my roping success to him ever since I switched onto him,” she said. “It seems like my roping really turned around.”
He does not look the part, and Salmond is the first one to say it.
“You look at his papers and you’re like, yeah, he’s definitely got it. And then you see him and he’s 14 hands tall and you’re like, what the heck?” she said.
The Work
The routine at home is unglamorous and consistent.
“We usually try to rope calves every other day that we’re home, and then those days that we’re not roping calves were usually exercising our horses, riding up hills and stuff,” she said. “And then I’ll rope the dummy on the ground.”
The harder work has been the part nobody sees.
“My mental game took me quite a long time. I’m kind of a perfectionist and I’m hard on myself a lot,” she said. “But I’ve read a couple books and [they] helped me, and tried to get closer to God, and figured out that if I just focused on myself and worry about what I need to do, I don’t need to worry about what anyone else does.”
Next Up
Salmond doesn’t get long to enjoy the lead. She ropes in Baker, Montana, on Thursday morning, goes to an amateur rodeo Friday and is back at Billings for Saturday morning slack—the second of the two big Montana weeks she’d been pointing toward. After that, the pro rodeos go quiet for a couple of weeks until Labor Day, and the Montana Circuit Finals in Great Falls are still five months out.
Asked to sum up her summer in a few words, she needed two.
“It’s been fun, and I’m just really grateful,” Salmond said. “Fun and grateful.”
