No. 1  |  $128,097.73

• Age: 22
• Hometown: Comanche, Texas
• Career Earnings: $502,363 (through 2025 season)
• NFBR Qualifications: 3 (2023-25)
• Best World Finish: 2nd (2023)
• Major Rodeos: RodeoHouston (2023, 2026); Spanish Fork (Utah) Fiesta Days Rodeo (2025); Jerome (Idaho) County Fair and Rodeo (2023); Killeen, Texas; Gooding, Idaho; Abilene, Texas (2024)
• Major Ropings: Kimes Ranch Million Dollar Breakaway high-money co-champion (2025)
• 2026 Standings: No. 2 in the world ($123,105.06)
• Star Horsepower: “Stylish Red Light” (Red Light); “Ru More Has It” (Blaze)
• Rope Choice: Top Hand—Pearl Snap, Crown, Halo

Hali Williams is the daughter of eight-time PRCA world champion header and ProRodeo Hall of Famer Speed Williams. The 22-year-old from Comanche, Texas, grew up in a practice pen where whatever the kids wanted, they earned.

“If we wanted something, like a new pair of headphones, we had to come out and rope the steer twice or reach from this distance,” she said.

Four years into her WPRA career she has three National Finals Breakaway Roping qualifications, a reserve world championship and two RodeoHouston titles.

Finding the Event

Her first true rodeo memory is the hospitality room in Houston at age 5, thinking, “Oh, this is what dad does.” She was homeschooled around a rodeo schedule, finishing high school online through Ignite Christian Academy, and she did gymnastics on a Junior Olympics track and played select softball before she ever nodded her head at a calf.

Team roping came first. Williams roped competitively through junior high—by her own count missing only four steers across three years—until her partner left to rope with someone else her freshman year of high school.

“It gave me that ultimatum,” Williams said. “Do I want to try to find another partner, or do I just want to work with my breakaway?”

She picked the event nobody was going to be able to take from her.

The Wall in 2023

Williams built a summer good enough to put a world title in sight, then hit a six-week stretch where she couldn’t catch a thing.

“Nobody wants that to be their story,” she said.

Her dad diagnosed it before she did. “It’s something mental,” he told her. “You’re trying not to miss.”

They reset with brute repetition.

“We’d be on the horses by 10, and we wouldn’t stop until 8:30 every night,” she said.

She came out of it winning more than $17,000 in a single week, then made her first NFBR that December on a torn tendon in her right ankle and won two rounds anyway—tying for the Round 2 win in 2.1 and taking Round 4 in 1.9.

She finished the year reserve world champion with $159,541, behind Shelby Boisjoli-Meged’s $197,706. It’s still the closest she’s come.

Houston, Twice

Williams roped her last calf at RodeoHouston in 2.6 seconds this March—clean, unhurried, exactly what the moment called for—and cashed a $65,000 check for her second title in the building. It didn’t feel like the first one, back in 2023.

“I think my foundation’s laid a little better, and it won’t be rocked as easy,” she said. “I’ve had enough failures… I’ve missed a world title. What else is this thing going to bring me?”

Red Light and Blaze

The horsepower splits two ways. “Stylish Red Light,” known as Red Light, is the sorrel gelding she’s grown up on since she started breakaway—enough that he’s shaped how she thinks a rope should feel and how she has them cut. “Ru More Has It,” or Blaze, is the newer, longer-strided addition that’s required her to relearn some of those instincts. She started Houston on Blaze and wasn’t roping well, then switched back to Red Light before the semifinals.

“It just clicked when we came back home,” she said. “He worked outstanding.”

The Top Hand Line

The ropes trace back through her dad. Williams ropes with Top Hand, an allegiance that predates her.

“My dad has been with Curt Matthews for his whole career,” she said of the rope maker behind the brand. “Curt started Classic Ropes, then Fast Back, then Top Hand—we’ve followed him pretty much wherever he went.”

She’s taken a hand in the ropes herself in recent years, running the Pearl Snap on Blaze and the Crown on Red Light, switching to the Halo in wind or indoor buildings depending on the setup.

The Company She Keeps

Breakaway doesn’t hand a roper a partner, but Williams doesn’t run alone either. She and Josie Conner agreed to split the high-money title at the 2025 Kimes Ranch Million Dollar Breakaway rather than settle it on a tiebreaker, $115,000 each. In December 2024, she and Martha Angelone won $300,000 across three weeks. And she pays attention to how the ropers around her handle a bad one.

“They have so much strength in their bodies,” she said of Taylor Munsell and Kelsie Domer. “Taylor will make her run, and she’s like, ‘It is what it is.’ She just rolls on.”

Faith First

What steadies her through the misses is the same thing she leaned on after blowing a run on what she called probably the best calf of the week in this year’s Houston Super Series. That night she sat down with her Bible and read the book of Hosea straight through.

“The next morning I woke up, and I just remember—that made a difference,” she said. “I felt so much better.”

“I’m keeping my faith first,” she said. “Whatever happens, happens second and third.”

What’s Next for Hali Williams

Williams carried the world lead out of Houston and held it into July, and she’s No. 2 now at $123,105.06. She also sits No. 10 in Cinch Playoff points at 554.98—outside the top-8 automatic cut for the Governor’s Cup—with the books closing Aug. 24 and Puyallup running Sept. 10-13. The National Finals Breakaway Roping is set for Dec. 18-19 at Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth.

“I learned from the last time that you can’t try to hold onto something that you don’t have yet,” Williams said. “I’m just going to keep fighting like I’m still 93rd in the world.”