God’s chosen Cowboy

Remembering Wyatt Cole’s legacy 1999-2019

“Get a bigger hammer.”

“It must be exhausting to be Wyatt all of the time.”

“There’s no such thing as being around Wyatt and not smiling.”

“Rodeo was his life, his passion.”

“Wyatt lived ‘Wide open, with no fear.’”

These statements describe who Wyatt Cole was according to the people closest to him.

Parker Wyatt Cole, a sophomore Agriculture Business major and UTM cowboy, passed away Feb. 10, 2019, in a car accident. He was 20 years old.

Wyatt had just competed at a USTRC Roping event in Memphis, finishing in third place the day before the accident.

All who knew him said Wyatt was a natural-born cowboy. He spent his entire life on a horse, grew up on his family’s cattle farm in Kentucky and had a love of rodeo flowing through his veins each day he was here.

“They’ve been on horses ever since they were born,” Isabella, his mother, said, referring to Wyatt and his brother Quinn. “I would be carrying them in a backpack and they would ride.”

Wyatt learned from an early age just what it meant to be a cowboy from his father, Greg.

“I was ponying Wyatt one time and the mare I was riding stepped across the creek, and the mare he was riding, instead of stepping across, jumped and hit a branch,” his dad said. “[The horse] rolled (Wyatt) off and he hit the ground. He’s crying and I said, ‘Son, let’s get back on. All cowboys get bucked off; it’s all right.’

“From that day on, whenever he got bucked off, he just got right back on.”

This philosophy is what led Wyatt through every day for the rest of his life.

At age 5, Wyatt was already helping his father on the farm, gathering bulls from the pastures.

“I put him on a horse just to ride along with me to get bulls up, I needed the help really. At 5, he was a pretty good hand at riding a horse and gathering up bulls. I was bringing four or five bulls up the fence line to the pen and the gate blew shut. I said, ‘Wyatt, just sit here and hold them.’ And as I came back around, this big black Limousin went to dive down the fence. Wyatt just takes his mare and dives right in front of him, at 5! My heart came all of the way up (to my throat) and I couldn’t get a sound out. It scared me to death. [He] turned the bull and he went right back up there. That was him; he had no fear,”

his dad recalled.

Wyatt began his rodeo career in kindergarten, which is the earliest the Kentucky Junior Rodeo Association allows children to compete. Wyatt and his older brother Quinn competed together their entire lives, as a roping team.

“Wyatt’s going to go out there and do his job and set it up. All you have to do is do your job,” Quinn said about team roping. “You could always trust him to hold up his end of the deal.”

Wyatt and Quinn, while growing up as brothers do by arguing constantly with each other, competed their best with each other.

Even when the boys had to compete on different teams and would place better with other partners, they always wanted to compete together.

“I wanted to be able to do my best with my brother and count on that consistency that this team will always be here,” Quinn said.

They had the chance to prove they performed the best as a team at the 2015 National High School Rodeo Finals when they placed 12th in the nation for team roping.

Wyatt found his therapy in roping at an early age. He never had a problem in life or in rodeo that he couldn’t work out through practicing roping in his front yard, his parents said.

Wyatt and his family traveled all across the country competing in rodeos together and meeting as many other competitors as they could, many of whom Wyatt continued to compete against at UTM.

“He fell in love with UTM, and that was it,” his dad said. “He wanted on the rodeo team.”

Wyatt decided to join the UTM Rodeo Team his junior year of high school after he won a roping competition during a tour at UTM.

“Wyatt was a really nice young man with a personality that touched many people,” John Luthi, UTM Rodeo coach, said. “He worked hard, strived to do the best he could, strived to do the right thing and worked to treat others like he wanted to be treated.”

Kayla Lombardo, a UTM graduate, volunteer assistant rodeo coach and friend of Wyatt’s, met Wyatt his freshman year.

“Wyatt was one of those where you knew exactly who he was before he even got there, because people had either talked about him, or you heard about him, or you heard him the second he walked into the building,” Kayla said.

“He was 100% everywhere he was. Overemphasized and dramatized everything: every lyric of every song, every standup comedy he listened to, he was everywhere at once.”

Cord Barricklow, the graduate assistant rodeo coach and a lifelong friend of Wyatt’s, said Wyatt was never afraid to go for first.

“He was never afraid,” Cord said. “He was going for the good time.”

While Wyatt had no fear, he often found himself getting injured because of his actions but he made the most of his life that he possibly could.

Waking up with a hospital band on his wrist and a post-it note on his chest saying he had a concussion wasn’t an unfamiliar occurrence for Wyatt.

While he excelled during team roping, Wyatt had a harder time picking up steer-wrestling during his time at UTM.

One night while training with Quinn in Kentucky, Wyatt drew a stubborn steer that no one had been able to bulldog. Wyatt was determined to prove that he could take it down.

“Well, the steer ends up running him over, jumping, kicks him in the head and knocks him out. He loses all memory so (Quinn and Wyatt) spent the night in the hospital,” Cord recounted.

“I remember getting ready to run this steer and then I woke up this morning on the couch and no one is home,” Wyatt told Cord.

While it took the collaboration of many people, Wyatt finally regained his memory of the three weeks before the accident.

“It never bothered him,” Cord said. “He was just starting to figure out steer wrestling, and an accident like that never set him back. He kept at it.”

This story of Wyatt’s stubborn determination to be the best steer wrestler he could be, no matter his size, is one his family and the rodeo team love to share.

When Wyatt wasn’t in the arena, you could almost guarantee he was two-stepping his way into every girl’s heart who would dance with him.

“It didn’t matter if (she) was young or old, he would dance with anybody,” his mom said.

Wyatt began learning how to dance at high school rodeo finals as another way to make the most of his time.

“We were two-stepping, and we were just winding our way between all of (these people) and we were swinging and he’d spin me out and everything. There was one where he went to dip me … and I felt my hair brush against the pool table,” Kayla said about her favorite dance with Wyatt.

“He grabbed my head with both hands and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m never going to let anything happen to you.’ And the next thing I know, he just starts swinging me in the other direction!”

It didn’t matter what music was playing, Wyatt was swing dancing.

“It was almost like he was trying to make the other person have a good time too because he was going to have a good time regardless,” Cord said. “He always had to be the first one to the dance floor.”

Whether it was in the arena, on the dance floor or in the classroom, Wyatt made it a priority to make each day the best he could.

Spencer Meyer, a UTM team roper, could always count on Wyatt to make him laugh, even if it was at his own expense.

“One time in class I walked in late, it was syllabus week,” Spencer said, “and the teacher wanted us to say our major, grade and name. I sat down late and it was about to me and Wyatt said, ‘Hey, say those three and your favorite color.’”

“So I said those three and said my favorite color (which is blue), and everyone just looked at me. Wyatt’s sitting back there rolling on the ground laughing.”

Spencer always knew when Wyatt pulled into his driveway from the sound of gravel flying as Wyatt made a donut in his yard.

“That’s just how he was,” Spencer said. “It was easy to have fun with him.”

Those who knew Wyatt knew the cowboy who chose to be happy every day of his life, and there weren’t many people who didn’t know Wyatt, his family said.

“This Martin rodeo is the epitome of Wyatt. That rodeo, the liveliness of the Martin rodeo, and the hype and the show is the rodeo comparison of Wyatt as a person,” Kayla said. “There is nothing that touches it, it blows everything else out of the water.”

As only a sophomore, Wyatt excelled on the rodeo team, advancing to three college rodeo finals in the 2018-19 season.

Wyatt’s legacy reminds the team to step outside of their comfort zones, to be a part of something bigger than themselves and live every day to the fullest.

The rodeo community will honor Wyatt’s legacy in true
: “Wyatt style” on Friday night of the UTM annual Spring College Rodeo.

“Abraham Lincoln said, ‘And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.’ And this child put more life in 20 years than a lot of people ever do,” his dad said. “He’s seen and done an awful lot in 20 years.”

Wyatt Cole lived wide open, with no fear.

Wyatt Cole at the 2018 Kentucky State Fair. | Photo Credit/ Agri-Exposure, LLC