2025 Black Hills Stock Show Ranch Rodeo Champions
Ty Ollerich, Ty Thybo, Ty Fenster, and Justin Collins made up the Ollerich Cattle Co team at the 2025 Black Hills Stock Show Ranch Rodeo. Despite coming into the short go on the bubble, the four South Dakota Cowboys came out on top as the champion team in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Ollerich calls Buffalo, South Dakota home with his wife Siri, and their 8-month-old son, where they ranch and run a fencing company. He went to college in Casper where he rodeoed with Fenster and when Ollerich moved to Buffalo, he met Thybo and Collins through roping and other events.
Three years ago, Ollerich was competing at the Black Hills Stock Show Ranch Rodeo when he saw Fenster ride a bronc. After that he jokingly asked him if “he’d like to be on a good team next year.” As karma would have it, they didn’t make it past the prelims last year as a team. However, over the summer the four continued going to a few ranch rodeos together and really figured out how to work together.
In the preliminary round against 37 other teams, they won the trailer loading, placed 10th in the head, heel, brand, and 11th in both the rope, mug, tie, and the bronc riding events.
“We were on the bubble for the last two sets and I really didn’t think we were going to make it back,” said Collins.
In the short round they placed in the trailer loading, won the branding, placed again in the rope, mug, tie, and thanks to Fenster who tied for first in the bronc riding they were able to make up some lost ground for the win.
Justin Collins of Ludlow, South Dakota spends his time training horses, mainly starting two-year-olds who go on to barrel racing and some roping. Ironically, he wasn’t riding one of his horses during the ranch rodeo due to being pretty sick himself and bad roads. He borrowed a horse from Sam Huffman of Belle Fourche, who was also competing and made it to the short round as well. “I didn’t know anything about him, but he worked good for what I needed him for,” he said.
Collins grew up with Thybo and had just met Fenster when they were on a team together last year at the Black Hills Stock Show.
In true ranch rodeo fashion, some events can get a bit wild as there is a lot going on; however, both Collins and Ollerich agreed that for them, everything went smoothly. Other than a steer in the rope, mug tie, that was “a little full,” as Collins put it, making it hard to gather the legs, everything else went their way.
The competition is what really sets the Black Hills Stock Show Ranch Rodeo apart from other ranch rodeos in the area. “Usually you’re only competing against 10-15 teams, but in Rapid it’s closer to 40,” Ollerich said.
The doctoring event is formatted differently than most ranch rodeos, which is why it was Collins’ favorite event this year. “There’s enough rules that make it to where you can’t just run through them and scatter everything to get by,” he said, “you have to really think about what you’re doing a bit more.”
The branding event in Rapid was Ollerich’s favorite “it was the best event for all your team mates,” he said, “I think that event takes a lot of the team ropers out of the game, in the prelims there are a lot of them which is good, everyone knows how to rope but once you get in there you see a lot of teams fall apart trying to be too fast.”
“I’ve been to a lot of ranch rodeos,” said Ollerich, “when everybody on your team says they didn’t really do much, it’s a testament to how good your team is and how well everyone does their job.”
“It’s kind of how it’s supposed to go,” he laughed while adding.
The champion team was awarded hats, saddles, jackets, and BEX sunglasses awarded by sponsors such as The Cow Lot, Clark & Associates Land Brokers, Hubbard Feeds, Rodeo Rigs, Hayden Outdoors, Pendleton, and Silver Sage Ranch Wear.
Full Results:
Champions- Ollerich Cattle Co.
2nd– AgriBest Feeds (Brett Phipps, Ty Kenner, Clete Scheer, John Klooz) awarded vests sponsored by Tri-State Livestock News
3rd– 73 Bar (Braden Pirrung, Easton West, Jade Nelson, Myles Kenzy)
4th– Leoffler Livestock (Kyle Leoffler, Hardy White, Clayton Van Aken, Justin Quint)
Top Hand- Clete Scheer, awarded a saddle sponsored by Ford Truck
Top Horse- Tyler Fear, awarded a saddle sponsored by Jenner Equipment
Pendleton Wild Horse Ride Champion- Prestyn Novak- awarded a custom engraved bottle of Pendleton sponsored by Pendleton
