No. 5 | $111,119
- Hometown: Big Timber, Montana (winters in Weatherford, Texas)
- Best World Finish: 8th (2022)
- NFBR Qualifications: 1 (2022)
- NFBR Average Title: 1 (2022—31.9 seconds on 10 head)
- Major Rodeos: Cody, Wyoming (2026, split); Red Lodge, Montana (2026, split); Logan, Utah (2025); Cascade, Montana (2025); Mandan, North Dakota (2025, Roughrider Cup)
- WPRA Honors: 2021 Montana Circuit champion, the first breakaway title the circuit awarded; 2008 National High School Rodeo Association breakaway champion
- Star Horsepower: Dropit Likeitz Hott (Scandal)
- Playoff Standing: No. 10 in Cinch Playoff Series points (691.36)
Cadee Williams has been to one National Finals Breakaway Roping, and she won the average at it.
The Big Timber, Montana, cowgirl went to Las Vegas in 2022 ranked No. 13, caught all 10 calves in 31.9 seconds and jumped five spots to eighth in the world. Then she didn’t make it back for three years.
“I am really happy because I wanted to come here and win the average,” she told The Breakaway Roping Journal that December. “The average was the only thing I was going for, and I’m really happy it worked out.”
She had placed in three rounds along the way—a 2.94 for fourth in Round 1, a 2.44 for fourth in Round 5, a 3.46 for sixth in Round 6—but the average was the end goal. It paid $13,866 of the $19,647 she took out of the building, and she closed the season at $75,319.
“I wasn’t getting the starts I wanted to, luckily I was in a position where I could just do my job,” she said.
Doing her job is the phrase she keeps returning to, and it goes back a long way. She grew up roping with three brothers, Colt, Cody and Casey, on her parents Clay and Roxie Tew’s place.
“I’ve been roping since I could walk; forever. It was a huge advantage,” she said. “They were definitely tough on me—the good kind of tough that really stepped me up. They all roped well and expected that of me, too.”
She started on a palomino mare named Sunny and came up on borrowed horsepower, including a calf horse called Roy that belonged to the Odoms. She won the National High School Rodeo Association breakaway championship for Montana in 2008, made the high school finals three times, roped at Weatherford College, and in 2021 won the first breakaway title the Montana Circuit ever awarded.
“I was fortunate to ride a lot of really great horses,” she said. “Riding all those horses growing up was huge.”
Read more: Cadee Williams’ Consistent Efforts Clinch 2022 National Finals Breakaway Roping Win
What followed the average title was three seasons outside the top 15 with her toughest year being 2025.
“It’s been a really rough year for me. My horse worked phenomenal all year, I have no one to blame but myself. I just kept missing,” she said last September. “You hear about people having those years—I’ve never gone to that many rodeos and roped that bad. I threw a loop a lot this summer where I’d rope the right side of their face. I did it for the lead at places like Cody and Oakley, and there were a couple of costly barriers.”
The fix was not a reinvention. It was equipment and delivery.
“I felt like I had been a little handcuffed, and trying to shove it around the calves’ neck instead of being more big and open with my delivery,” she said. “I got my ropes stiffer, kept them warm, and cut them longer. Sometimes it’s the little fixes that help.”
Then she won the Roughrider Cup at Mandan, North Dakota, in September, going 2.0 seconds in the heaviest mud she had ever competed in for $11,167—enough to put her back inside the top 30 and into the winter rodeos that decide a season.
“I have roped in mud like they had at Mandan—I’m from Montana. But the mud was the heaviest I’ve ever roped in,” she said. “I really needed to win Mandan to get back into the top 30 for Houston. I had my hammer cocked for Mandan.”
Read more: Cadee Williams’ $11K Comeback in Muddy Mandan
The winter paid it off. Williams made the short round at all five stops on the Texas Swing—Fort Worth, San Antonio, RodeoHouston, Rodeo Austin and San Angelo—and won better than $23,000 doing it, including 2.0-second runs to win a bracket round at Fort Worth, a bracket round at San Antonio and a share of the first round at San Angelo.
“I was a little frustrated because I didn’t finish as strong as I wanted at some of them, but looking back, it’s hard to be upset,” she said afterward. “I just kind of nickeled and dimed my way through, but it adds up.”
The mare that carried her through it is Dropit Likeitz Hott—“Scandal”—a cutting-bred bay by the late Hottish that Williams has had since the mare was 4. She is small enough that people misjudge her.
“She’s tiny, and I think that throws people off, but the first calf I ran on her she broke so hard I almost came out of the back of the saddle,” Williams said. “We made five good runs right away and it was just like, wow—when it’s a fit, it’s a fit.”
She hardly practices on her. The only thing she changes rodeo to rodeo is the bit.
Read more: Cadee Williams Goes 5-for-5 on Texas Swing Short Rounds
She has kept the ball rolling through the summer.
Williams drew into the first pool at the Calgary Stampede, which meant she could not chase Cowboy Christmas the way the rest of the field does, so she entered three rodeos and won two of them—a share of Cody, Wyoming, worth $7,442, and a share of Red Lodge, Montana, on a 2.1 worth $3,539.
“I only went to three rodeos because I was up in that first set in Calgary,” she said. “So we kind of had to do good where we went. We had to make it count.”
At Calgary she placed in all three rounds of Pool A, won a share of the third round on a 3.4 and came out of the pool second with $14,417 and a spot on Championship Sunday.
The calves there run hard.
“It was full contact. These calves are flying, absolutely full contact. And they’re so little, so you’ve got to be really precise with your loop,” she said. “But it was so much fun—it was a blast.”
Then she skipped Oakley, Estes Park, Casper and Sheridan, because she has three children and their junior rodeos are also in July.
“There are so many good rodeos, you’ve got to go hard no matter what. But I kind of try to be a little more choosy,” she said. “We can only do what we can do in the summer. So runs like that are very, very important for me.”
Read more: Cadee Williams Makes Cowboy Christmas Count in Her Home Territory
Williams is No. 5 in the world at $111,119 in 45 rodeos, $3,140 behind Taylor Munsell in fourth and $2,663 ahead of Josie Conner in sixth. She has not added a check in BRJ’s last two weekly reports while her rodeo count climbed from 39 to 45, which is the whole shape of the next month for her: the money in front of her and the money behind her are both close enough to move in a weekend.
The playoff math is tighter still. Williams is No. 10 in Cinch Playoff Series points at 691.36, which is 39.52 outside the top eight that earn automatic berths to the Governor’s Cup in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sept. 25-27. Those eight are not locked until Sept. 21, and Puyallup, Washington, runs Sept. 10-13 in between—she is in that field, and the top four out of it advance to Sioux Falls no matter where the points fall.
The regular season closes Sept. 30. The National Finals Breakaway Roping runs Dec. 18-19 at Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth, and a second qualification would come three years after the first.
“I think it’s big to just do your job every time. There’s a lot of waiting, and you never really know how it’s going to shake out,” she said. “A lot of times if you just do your job, it ends up working out—even when you don’t think it will.”
