MISSOULA — Rodeo has been something special for Kory Mytty, as the cowboy life was something he was born and bred to do.
"I've roped ever since I could walk, you know, and I really didn't rope consistently until about the sixth grade where I got a horse, roped practice every day, and went to team roping clinics," Mytty said. "My parents roped, my brother roped, my sister roped. And so it was just something that we did other than skiing, which we also did."
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The long-time team roper has a decorated career in the sport, including a trip to the National Finals Rodeo in 1994.
"It was a dream of mine from, call it the eighth grade, to make it to the National Finals Rodeo," Mytty said. "It was a dream, it was fun, it was a goal, and it was more of an expectation than the drive and the pure will to win.
"It was just expected, not necessarily from anybody other than myself and a drive from my parents that, hey, this is what we do, is we win. And so we did."
What followed was a decades-long, highly successful rodeo career on the Montana pro circuit. As recently as two years ago Mytty wanted to prove he still had it, and did.
Saying he's retired now from the sport, the Lolo cowboy is still fully entrenched, as he wraps up year No. 14 as the University of Montana head rodeo coach.
"It's a passion of mine that, you know, for 50 years I've been doing this. I've learned a lot. I've accomplished a lot myself," Mytty said. "Anything I've learned or accomplished, good and or bad, I can pass it on to our athletes and try to get them out of a funk or a bad run or try to get them positive and confident in moving forward where, hey, even though we missed three in a row, the next one we'll probably get."
Through trials and tribulations, coaching allows Mytty to continue learning even today, as the sport continues to give back to him.
"Everybody learns from failure more than they learn from a perfect ride up and down the mountain, right?" Mytty said. "You have wrecks along the way, or you have mistakes made along the way, bad advice, good advice wasn't taken, and just trying to learn different ways to say things. And if somebody's not hearing you, try to find a new way to say it."
From his competition to his teaching, the Missoula native has lived and breathed rodeo and helped the next generation along the way.
"Just giving back, passing what I've learned down," Mytty said. "It's not like I've learned everything or know everything. I still learn stuff today all the time. And then, trying to remember everything and pass it along is, sometimes it takes me a day and I'm like, oh yeah, let's try that."
