Cooper Martin is a Kansas calf roper who qualified for his first ever National Finals Rodeo in 2017 when he was only 19 years old. He would go on to qualify three NFRs in a row before we would stop seeing him.
Martin says that since his last NFR in 2019 he had quite a few life changes. He got married in 2020, was having a great winter run and on June 1, everything changed.
When a coil wrapped around his wrist during a practice run, Martin tore two ligaments. He ended up having six pins put in his wrist before he had a second surgery to do carpal tunnel release. He said that the carpal tunnel release was a worse surgery than the first one.
“My mind at the time was thinking how soon can I be back? Well, that was shot down pretty quick,” Martin said.
He says the real struggle started after the pins were removed and he had to rehab and train his hand again. His hand was numb from the wrist up and that feeling is slowly coming back. Besides working on getting his hand in calf roping shape again, he started cross fit to keep the rest of his body in rodeo condition.
Now, Martin is on the road again.
“It’s all just kind of come together as it needed to and I definitely like to use that to my advantage this year knowing that I’ve had a lot of success, keeping that confidence and know where to go. The rodeo’s are going to be better than ever,” Martin said.
Martin has had a good winter and his work is showing. He currently sits No. 14 in the world and is hunting for that fourth trip to Las Vegas.
