Tyler Calhoun, the 2025 Resistol Rookie of the Year from Richards, Texas, bought a horse he’d watched come up through the futurities—Ohh Its A Boon, the 7-year-old gelding he calls “Stanley”—and turned a $105,162 resume into the second half of a two-horse punch that has him sitting 15th in the world and Stanley’s lifetime earnings north of $200,000.

Calhoun had been watching the gelding for a long time. Jeremy Barwick bought him on advice from Shane Hanchey as a late 3-or-4-year-old—back when he was still being heeled on—and Calhoun caught him through the futurities and liked what he saw.

“Shane told me whenever he was going to look at him, he was like, ‘Man, I think this horse is going to be pretty cool. I’m going to rope on him,” Calhoun said.

Then Blake Deckard seasoned him at the rodeos this past summer, and Hanchey spent the winter jackpotting on him around his house.

“I’ve always thought the horse was super cool and had a bright future, so it’s cool that it came full circle,” Calhoun said.

The lucky bind

What pushed it over the edge was a bind Calhoun was in. The good bay horse Calhoun won his rookie title on—Lil Wayne—had gotten hurt, and Calhoun needed a horse. On the drive home from the Tucson short round, he and Hanchey got to talking. Å mutual friend had already called Calhoun’s big brother figure, Des Johnson, and told him: “You need to tell Buck that he needs to try Stanley. I think he’s a really cool horse and they’d be a good fit.”

“Hanchey told me, ‘When you get home, just saddle him up and run a couple on him,” Calhoun said. “He was one of the coolest feeling horses that I had felt in a while. I knew that he would give me a chance to win from the first time I swung a leg over him.”

He took him home for a day and ran three more calves. The first rodeo he hauled him to was Bay City, Texas. He was 7.6 and won it. He vet-checked the horse Friday morning and wrote the check on Saturday. The next stop was Houston, where he placed second in his Super Series.

If the shoe fits

Ask Calhoun what the it-factor is and he doesn’t reach for adjectives.

“Honestly, he just fits me, which is a big, big part of what allows someone to be able to win on a horse that much,” Calhoun said. “I like smaller horses and he’s fast. He scores really, really well. He’s super fast and pulls calves across my lap and doesn’t drag. He’s tighter strided and I really like a tight strided horse.”

The rest of the fit is all personality, which for Calhoun, is huge.

“He can be a little bit of a butthead sometimes,” Calhoun laughed. “That really fits me though because I like to mess with one. I like to keep my thumb on him a little bit.”

That was the read Hanchey gave Des when he made the match.

Off the clock, Calhoun says, the horse is a puzzle.

“He has a weird personality when you hang around him, but when it comes to the arena and doing his job, he just wants to help you and wants to please,” Calhoun said. “He’s on your team the whole time. He’ll never put you in a situation where you’re in a bind. He always wants to help you.”

The futurity pipeline

Calhoun has always ridden young horses—never an old one. So a 7-year-old fresh out of the futurities suited him, even if it made other people nervous.

“A lot of people were a little bit leery about him being seven years old and coming out of the futurities and not knowing exactly how good he was going to be,” Calhoun said. “But I knew from the first time that I rode him that he had all this stuff and he had the right mind to be able to take it and perform at a high level.”

And in his opinion, the horse still isn’t finished.

“He’s not even peaked his full potential yet,” Calhoun said. “He won’t reach his full potential until he’s nine. By the time he’s nine, he’ll be really good and solid. You won’t have to worry about him and will just be able to go do your job every time on him.”

Stacked resume

Before Calhoun ever backed him in the box, Stanley had already banked $105,162 in the futurity and derby world—and not all in the tie-down. Of that total, $52,222 came in the breakaway, $36,974 in the tie-down and $15,966 in the heeling. His biggest single check was a $15,000 runner-up at the 2023 ARHFA World Championship heeling as a 4-year-old. Through the futurities Stanley was shown by Shane Hanchey, Beau Peterson, Taylor Hanchey, Hadley Thompson, Taylor Munsell and Jason Schaffer, to name a few.

The rodeo money has come fast. Calhoun estimates he’s won around $112,000 on the horse this year once you count the jackpots, roughly $58,000 of it at the ProRodeos, which when added to the futurity resume, puts Stanley’s lifetime earnings a little past $200,000.

One day at Houston tells Stanley’s story better than the numbers, though. Calhoun roped on him at RodeoHouston inside NRG Stadium, then loaded him up, hauled him to the horse show building and won the AQHA show on him the next day.

“There’s not very many horses that they rode inside NRG and then turned around and won the horse show on,” Calhoun said. “That was really special.”

Two number ones

Lil Wayne came back from his injury better than ever—Calhoun won Salt Lake on the 14-year-old this summer—which means the reigning Rookie of the Year now has two horses he trusts completely in the trailer.

“You can’t have an A and a B, you have to have two A’s or three A’s or four A’s or whatever that case may be,” Calhoun said. “A lot of times guys, they’re like, ‘Man, I got my number one and my number two.’ You need five number ones to keep up out here.”

The two complement each other well. Calhoun rides Lil Wayne on the stronger calves and saves Stanley for the better ones. Because Stanley is only 7, he hasn’t had to pound runs into him—a calf here, a calf there, and the horse has stayed fresh through the summer run.

Stanley’s pedigree

Ohh Its A Boon is by Once In A Blu Boon and out of Our Little Noel, a mare by Smart Mate. Stanley is the first Once In A Blu Boon Calhoun has ridden—and he liked him enough to breed toward the cross himself.

“I do have plans to breed to a Once In A Blu Boon just because of him,” Calhoun said. “They seem very connected to the cow. He just wants to be latched.”

That fits a bigger idea Calhoun keeps coming back to: the calf roping world is finally breeding on purpose for its own horses. He’s starting a small program of his own with a Dodge The Catt mare bred to Metallic Rebel, and a High Brow Cat granddaughter bred to Riata stallion, Cash One Pepto.

“Horses are getting very expensive these days and I think that’s where the game is going,” Calhoun said.

Stanley, in his eyes, is the proof of the concept that a horse bred and made in the futurities, can come out the other side a rodeo horse, just like people have done for several years in the team roping and barrel racing.