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Don Gronning
Caleb McMillan a true All Around hand
NEWPORT — In the age of rodeo event specialization, there are few contestants who compete in more than one event, let alone compete in both riding and timed events.
Caleb McMillan, 27, is one of the few cowboys who competes and wins on both ends of the arena. He rides bulls, ropes and steer wrestles, winning checks in one event or another just about everywhere he goes.
McMillan is the 2024 Linderman Award winner, one of the most prestigious and hard-to-get awards in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. In 2020, no award was given because nobody qualified by winning money in enough events during the regular PRCA season.
The award is named after Bill Linderman, who won multiple championships in the 1940s and 50s. His first world title was in bareback riding in 1943. In 1950 he was the first cowboy to win three world championships in one year, the All Around, Saddle Bronc and Steer Wrestling titles.
To win the Linderman Award, a contestant must win at least $1,000 in three events, including a timed event and a rough stock event. Timed events include steer wrestling, tie-down roping, steer roping and team roping. Rough stock events include bareback, saddle bronc and bull riding.
McMillan won $49,837 in four events in 2024, including $31,267 in bull riding, $9,080 in tie down roping, $7,322 in steer wrestling and $2,168 in steer roping. He won the bull riding at the Sandpoint PRCA rodeo last year.
“This is really cool,” McMillan told the ProRodeo Sports News about winning the Linderman. “I’ve come close a few times but never got it done. This is my first time and it’s quite an honor. There are a lot of good cowboys (who’ve won the Linderman Award) that I’ve looked up to my whole life while rodeoing: Phil Lynne, the Whitakers and Josh Frost. The list of guys who’ve won the Linderman are pretty good cowboys.”
McMillan accepted the Linderman Award at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas last December.
McMillan told The Miner he liked bull riding the best. He grew up in a rodeo family; his parents Mark and Lynette McMillan own the Aces Wild rodeo stock contracting company that has supplied rodeo stock at the Newport Rodeo for years.
Unlike many modern rodeo athletes, McMillan doesn’t hit the gym for workout.
“I work for a living,” he says. He runs about 300 head of cattle in the Soap Lake area and has about 20 horses. He and his wife Kylee are expecting their first child in September.
McMillan stays involved in the family business, picking up for the Aces Wild. Pickup men are there to provide a way for riders to get off bucking horses and safely get stock out of the arena.
“You’ve got to have a good horse and read the field,” McMillan says about picking up. “You have to know what’s going on.”
Rodeo fans have watched McMillan compete in Pend Oreille County rodeos since he was a child.
“I probably first competed in the breakaway roping when I was about
SEE COWBOY, 6B 10,” McMillan says. The breakaway roping was then open to boys 16 and younger, as well as the female ropers. McMillan roped at both Newport and Cusick rodeos.
“He won a lot of money breakaway roping,” says his father, Mark McMillan. He says Caleb was always an active child, loving the outdoors and being around cattle. He was always interested in rodeo.
“He loved that stuff ever since he was a kid,” Mark says.
Mark and his wife Lynette have a big family. “Legally, we have 11,” Mark says. They have four biological children, with Caleb being the oldest, then adopted six more. That doesn’t count a couple who they basically raised, like Jacob Stacey, who Caleb calls his older brother. Stacey, an accomplished rodeo competitor in his own right, helped Caleb learn to steer wrestle.
McMillan got bull riding tips from 2011 PRCA world champion bull rider Shane Proctor, who put on bull riding clinics at Nespelem McMillan attended.
McMillan competed in junior rodeo, working his way up to the amateur, collegiate and professional ranks.
He has competed in all rodeo events. He attended college at Northwest College at Powell, Wyoming, where he studied welding. He competed on the rodeo team, qualifying for the collegiate national finals in saddle bronc riding, bull riding and tie down roping. He was the reserve champion all around cowboy one year.
He has won enough this year to qualify for another Linderman award. He is ranked third in the Columbia River Circuit’s All Around and bull riding standings, seventh in steer wrestling and eight in steer roping. For some reason he doesn’t appear in the tie down roping standings, despite winning his biggest check of the year, $3,024, for a fourthplace finish in the tie down roping at Redmond, Oregon.
McMillan rides bulls well enough to compete in the PBR, where riders go after far bigger checks. He’s proven it by being the first to ride previously unridden bulls like Benny Beutler’s Overwatch. He’s won the bull riding at the Baker Broncs and Bulls event in Baker, Montana, a competition with 100 bull riders.
So why not compete in the PBR? “I like rodeo,” he says simply.
