CHADRON, Neb. – Two Chadron State College seniors, bareback rider Cinch Kiger of Overton, Neb., and barrel racer Bridget Romey of Hot Springs, S.D., will be competing at the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, which runs this coming week from June 14-20. 

Kiger will compete in slack on Sunday, June 14 and Monday, June 15, while Romey will compete in slack on Monday and Tuesday. Both CSC qualifiers will take part in a 7 p.m. performance on the night of Tuesday, June 16, which will be streamed live on ESPN+ (subscription required). 

If Kiger and Romey are able to qualify in the top 12 in aggregate of their respective events after the three rounds of preliminaries, they will compete in the championship short-go performance on Saturday, June 20. All the action will be in the Ford Wyoming Center, which has a seating capacity of nearly 8,400.

Kiger is the Central Rocky Mountain Region's bareback riding champion for the 2025-26 season, finishing with 1,120 points. Romey placed third in the region's barrel racing standings with 480 points. The top three contestants in each of rodeo's nine events from all 11 regions qualify for the CNFR.

Kiger earned points at each of the 10 regional rodeos this season. He won the bareback riding at three of them and was the runner-up three times while claiming the title.

Romey had lots of competition, with nearly 100 barrel racers at each regional rodeo, but still scored points at half of them. Romey said she is excited to be competing at nationals, adding that her gray mare, Six, is healthy and has been running well during practice sessions.

The national rodeo will begin Sunday, June 14 at 1 p.m. with a morning church service and an afternoon of Broncs, Bulls and Breakaway. The next two days starting at 7 a.m., more "slack" will take place. All of the more than 400 contestants will have competed twice following those sessions.

Five nightly rodeo performances featuring contestants in all nine events will follow, beginning at 7 o'clock Tuesday, June 16. After everyone has competed three times, the 12 leaders in each event will be vying for top honors during the finals on Saturday night.

Chadron State entries have been competing at nationals for 70 years, as CSC alum Don Meter, then of Minatare and now of Gering, was the calf roping winner as s CSC junior in 1956. None of CSC's 21 national rodeo placewinners through the years have been bareback riders and only three of them have been barrel racers. The latter include Don Meter's daughter, Martee, who was fifth in 1979, along with Shari Fisher of Chadron, second in 1983, and Amy Deichert of Spearfish, S.D., fifth in 2014.  

Kiger is just the second Chadron State cowboy to win the region's bareback title. The first was Kyle Bloomquist of Raymond, Minn., in 2019. The other CSC national bareback qualifiers have been Whitten Hoover of Ainsworth, 2009 and '10; Wyatt Clark of Curtis, 2015; Nate McFadden of Elsmere, Neb., and Justin Kissack of Gillette, Wyo., 2017; and Rowdy Moon of Sargent, Neb., 2018 and 2021.

Previous CSC barrel racers who did not place at nationals but qualified include Joy Peterson of Bayard in 1992 and Jennifer Cullan of Alliance and Josie Jordan of Broken Bow, both in 2001.