Cody Siegner grew up on a sprawling cattle ranch near Crane, Oregon, coming from a family that instilled values of hard work and sacrifice.
CRANE — The gravel road to Riverside Ranch twists through an ocean of sagebrush like a snake, biting holes in tires and kicking up dust. It runs along the South Fork Malheur River, steering around sheer cliffs and getting bumpier across the line from Harney into Malheur County.
On a rugged hill above the brush, daisies are in full bloom. May rains brought forth yellow flowers spread across a breathtaking landscape, not a sign of human life for miles.
Cattle begin to appear in spurts below, steering away from the Siegner family’s ranch and on their way to new grazing fields. Eighteen-year-old Cody Siegner is at the back of the line on horseback, encouraging a lame calf to keep up.
His sturdy, 6-foot-7 frame — which helped him earn a football scholarship to Oregon State as a tight end — is imposing in the saddle. He whoops and rides in swift motions to keep the cattle in line. His state championship belt buckle from the Oregon High School Rodeo Association gleams in the high desert sun.
“Oh, look,” Cody’s mother, Jamie Siegner, says from the driver’s seat of a side-by-side ATV perched on the hill.
A single, curious pronghorn has peeked its head through the brush and is headed Jamie’s way. It stares long enough to get the measure of a few unfamiliar humans before bouncing over the horizon.
Back at the foot of the hill, Cody rides ahead of the calf to tend to the rest of the herd. Its pace isn’t picking up, and there isn’t much more he can do. Sweat drips down Cody’s face beneath the shade of his hat.
Adaptation is an essential aspect of ranch life, Cody says. And of football, too.
“You’ve just got to move on to the next thing,” he says. “What’s past is past. If something goes wrong, you can’t always change it. You drop a pass, you don’t get the job done that you need to get done on the ranch, you can’t change that now. So, you’ve got to figure out how to adapt.”
Long, drawn-out moos echo off the hill. Then a man’s booming voice.
“Woo! Woo!”
Cody’s father, former University of Oregon tight end Mitch Siegner, appears below amid the herd of cattle. In a pink shirt, dusty jeans and light-colored Stetson cowboy hat, the red-faced and bespectacled rancher siphons his portion of the herd onto the path.
The ATV rumbles down the hill and flanks Cody as the smell of livestock fills the air. On a far off vista, his older sister Kelsie is rounding up more cattle to join the larger group.
Jamie hits the gas through a thick patch of mud to avoid getting stuck. A seven-month-old, mud-soaked cattle dog named Newt jumps in the vehicle and splatters everyone’s jeans. He’s still learning, the Siegners say.
Coming to a stop just outside the next pasture, Jamie takes a deep breath and watches her daughter, son and husband beginning to coalesce behind the last of the cattle. Things are moving quicker than they usually do, and Cody is leading the way with confidence.
“Cody has a lot to learn when he gets to Oregon State,” Jamie says. “But as far as his self-discipline and ability to do hard things, and be in tense situations, that’s all part of this. They have a lot of responsibility. But we’ve also worked hard to balance that for them, so this didn’t become their only life.”
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Cody grew up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Oregon, the son and grandson of lifelong ranchers. It’s all he’s known. He describes it as a peaceful if challenging life, with much of the real excitement in his youth coming on the basketball court, football field or rodeo grounds.
The towering tight end out of Crane High School is also a four-time state champion in basketball — catching lobs for thunderous dunks — and a bona fide star on the high school rodeo circuit. His specialty is calf roping, commonly referred to as tie-down, where he’s won multiple state titles and participated in national competition.
Siegner played eight-man football for 1A Crane, with a graduating class of 24 people — large for a town of just 158. He caught the attention of Oregon State, Boise State and Washington State before committing to the Beavers as a three-star prospect.
Mitch played for the Ducks during the early 1990s. Jamie played college basketball at George Fox under current OSU women’s coach Scott Rueck — who also coached Cody’s cousin, Samantha, in Corvallis.
The Beavers first identified and offered Cody a scholarship in 2023 at their high school camp. Coaches were impressed by his combination of size and athleticism, eventually making multiple recruiting trips out to Crane.
Tight ends coach Will Heck has made the nearly six-hour drive from Corvallis to the Siegners’ ranch, meeting both the family and their cattle. Offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson has been to the high school for multiple games, once getting turned around in a snowstorm between Bend and Burns.
Gunderson said Cody’s athletic background, combined with his inherent toughness and work ethic, should translate well to the next level.
“The kid is not going to shy away from hard work,” Gunderson said. “He’s tough as hell, and I think you have to be tough as hell growing up doing what he’s been doing.”
Cody and his family believe his success in football can be traced back to the rodeo arena, and his upbringing on the ranch. There is little room for excuses, always more work to be done, and a unique acceptance of the myriad factors outside one’s control.
“You’ve got a mother cow, it’s sick or something, you get her in the corral, and you forget to fill her water up. That’s $2,000. And you’re playing with its life,” Cody said. “Something like that, a trial by fire, instills it into you.”
Into the fire
Before Cody could walk, he was on the back of a horse with his dad — one of Mitch’s hands on the reins, and the other keeping his baby boy steady in front of him. By the time he was five years old, he had a rope in hand and was seated on his own, gentle steed. Cody joined Mitch and essentially the whole town at brandings, participated in youth rodeo, and embraced the lifestyle he and his sisters were raised in.
But Cody, Kelsie and Kaitlyn also spent long hours in the car riding to their youth and high school sporting events around the state. All while learning the tricks of the ranching trade and getting plenty of dirt on their boots.
Kelsie plays college basketball for Eastern Oregon University, and younger sister Kaitlyn stars in basketball, volleyball and track as a rising junior at Crane. Much of the family discussion centers around which “rig” to take to a game or practice or community event.
“Sports year round, rodeo, whatever, and they’re just hauling us to all of it,” Cody said. “And I’m really thankful for that, because it gave me a lot of opportunities that some kids from a town this size may not have.”
The halls of the Crane High are narrow, and the classrooms dwarfed in size by workshops for kids to learn the trades: welding, woodwork, metalwork and the like. These come far more in handy for rural life than algebra. Some bring their class projects home for immediate use on the farm.
Most Crane students come from agricultural backgrounds, with the school’s attendance boundary measuring twice the size of the entire Willamette Valley. And because some of its 85 total high school students travel hundreds of miles for school, Crane is a public boarding school with dormitories for them to stay in during the week.
The community rallies behind its high school sports teams, packing the gym for basketball games whether they have a family member on the court or not. Jamie is the athletic director.
“The school is the community in Crane,” Mitch said. “It’s the heartbeat of the deal.”
Crane is on the east side of Harney County, but the Siegners’ home is in Malheur — named for the French word for misfortune or tragedy. Those living in Oregon’s outback know that Malheur is inescapable, especially on the ranch, but it isn’t some local curse whispered about in saloons.
As the acclaimed Oregon author Rick Steber wrote, paraphrasing Robert Burton, a cowboy lives by a simple code: “What cannot be cured is endured.”
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In 1972, Monte Siegner and wife Patricia took their five children and moved from Washington State to remote Fields, Oregon, where they started Wrench Ranch. They eventually sold the land and moved their operation two hours north to Riverside Ranch, just outside of Crane, in 1992.
When Mitch was a freshman at Crane High School, four years before the family made its move, his mother was in a horse accident that left her paralyzed from the neck down.
Despite limited use of her arms, Patricia painted and took photos of the landscapes her family lived and worked on. She lived at Riverside with Monte for nearly 30 years before her death in 2022 at the age of 83.
“She was probably the most positive and strongest person you’d ever meet,” Cody said. “And she was a great artist. For being essentially completely paralyzed, it was amazing what she could do. The resilience. Not a lot of people would want to continue on after something like that, but she figured out a way to continue to live her life.”
On the deck behind his home on the ranch, now 88-year-old Monte reaches down to pet his fluffy Australian Shepherd named Baby. He remembers when grandson Cody first took to ranch life as a young child, running around and roping furniture, pets and grandparents.
Cody expressed a desire to return to the ranch and take over for his father someday, whenever his athletic career is over. Monte joked that when his grandson “sees the bright lights of town” in Corvallis, he might end up changing his mind.
“Ranching isn’t for everybody,” Monte said, speaking generally. “There is a certain amount of loneliness to it. The kids, watching them do what they do and hearing what they’ve done, it makes it a lot more livable. But I don’t think everybody would be for this life.”
The days are long, the work is physically demanding, and one is often at the mercy of the land and weather. There is always a problem to solve, and rarely enough people to solve it. But Cody is a natural, Monte says, and the joy he experiences even on hard days is evident.
The family owns 5,500 acres and leases another 5,500 of public land from the Bureau of Land Management to graze their cattle. Around 350 cows roam the hills and valleys along with their calves, and a handful of bulls lumber around inside a pen near the Siegners’ driveway.
Cody and his sisters spent hours in the front yard locked in heated basketball games, occasionally ending with one of them in tears. And inside similar wooden fenceposts to the ones keeping the bulls contained, young Cody would eventually graduate from roping the family pets and his grandparents to actual cattle.
Along the way, he gained a lifelong best friend with whom tragedy formed an unbreakable bond.
A ball of dirt
A crowd of high school rodeo participants on horseback waits on the edge of a dusty parking lot filled with trucks and trailers. Cody turns the corner on his horse, guiding another without a rider. The young cowboy’s face is serious.
Moments later, he is hit square in the cheek with a ball of dirt. Or is it horse dung? Cody cracks up laughing and shakes his head in disbelief, turning to the culprit.
Tommy Jack Rose, his lifelong best friend and roping partner. Crouched on the edge of the fence, his shoulders shake beneath a long sleeve shirt. He brushes his dark hair back and flashes a goofy grin.
Jamie rolls her eyes nearby. She affectionately calls him “Jackson,” as a nickname.
“He’s more like a brother than a friend,” Tommy Jack says of Cody. “We do everything together. I think we’re the closest thing to being brothers without actually being brothers that there is.”
Unlike the future Oregon State football star, whose mother forbade it long before a college football career was even a possibility, the wild-hearted Tommy Jack participates in steer wrestling — also known as bulldogging — in addition to tie-down and team roping.
Cody’s analytical mindset has shown up in rodeo from the beginning, Tommy Jack said, and should come in handy on the college football field.
“We’ll talk all the time, like he’ll watch me bulldoggin’ and say something like, ‘Yeah, I saw your entire thought process right there,’” Tommy Jack said with a laugh.
Having wiped the dirt from his face and watched Tommy Jack bulldog, Cody rides alongside him to their places at the edge of the arena for team roping.
Eyes locked on a chute between them, Tommy Jack and Cody wait for their cue. The calf bursts out of the gate and makes a run for it, dust flying behind its frantic little hooves.
Tommy Jack rides out first with pace, eventually swinging his lasso around the animal’s head. Trailing close behind is Cody, baring the lasso in his teeth, identifying the precise moment to swing his rope around the calf’s back legs. Cody and Tommy Jack seem to move as one, perfectly in sync after years of partnership in the arena.
When the calf is roped and stretched, their time is 8.8 seconds. That’s good enough to keep them in the running for a third state title in four years, and one last trip to nationals together this summer.
Someone from the city might raise an eyebrow at a roped calf or a steer wrestled to the ground. But injury rates for the animal are exceedingly low across all rodeo events — one survey of 148 professional rodeo performances recorded just 28 animal injuries in 60,244 exposures, a rate of 0.00046%.
Cowboys can only dream of those numbers. While Cody waits for his individual event, another tie-down participant flies off his horse and into the hard, metal fence. He’s bruised and battered, but walks off with the assistance of medical personnel.
Tie-down is a similar setup to team roping, but with just one person: a chute, a calf, and a rider on horseback holding a lasso. As soon as he catches up to the calf, Cody leaps off his horse in a fluid motion and waddles up to it in a wide stance. Using his enormous wingspan, he reaches over the calf’s body and flips it on its back, pulling the rope out of his mouth before tying the animal’s legs together quickly.
He misses the knot the first time around, kicking his head in frustration, but still ends up with one of the best times of the day at 11.5 seconds. Always room to improve.
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Tommy Jack’s father, J.W., has been Cody’s rodeo coach for much of his life. Outside the Rose family home amid busy chutes and stables, he sets a can of Michelob Ultra down before his interview.
“So you want me to say nice things about Cody, huh?” he asks behind a wide smile. “Not sure I can do that.”
He can, of course, at length. Cody is like a son to him. J.W. and Mitch were friends growing up, and that has passed on to their boys, who have been roping together since they were 10 years old.
“Just like all of us, lots of trials and tribulations,” J.W. says. “They kind of fought like brothers sometimes. It’s been real close-knit all the way through. They’re brothers sometimes also to a fault. But at the end of the day, one would back the other to the end.”
A collective trial for the Rose and Siegner families was the death of Tommy Jack’s older brother, John Barry, in a car accident in 2016. He was 15 years old. Tommy Jack was in the car with his brother and suffered two broken legs, among other injuries, in the accident. John Barry was killed instantly.
“I was just focused on being there for Tommy Jack,” Cody said. “He was in the hospital bed for a long time, so I tried to help him through the best I could. I think it just solidified that when one of us needs it, they can count on the other person to be there no matter what.”
Tommy Jack will pursue collegiate rodeo and has dreams of a professional career. He plans to visit Cody at Oregon State as much as possible, even if it means showing up unannounced with an impish grin on his face.
He doesn’t expect their brotherhood to change, nor the attitude that earned Cody so many accolades in rodeo, basketball and football. The ranching mentality means giving your all, because all is required. And Tommy Jack sees that paying dividends for Cody in college football.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s three in the morning, really,” Tommy Jack said. “When you’ve got crap to do, you’ve got to go do it.”
Reaping the rewards
Belt buckles earned from winning rodeo events fill a glass display beneath the TV in the Siegners’ living room. Most of them are Cody’s, but both sisters have a few in there, too. Including when they teamed up with their brother. Commemorative state championship saddles and lassos stand beside it, and family pictures hang on the wall.
“Well,” Monte pipes in from across the room, gesturing at the display of belt buckles. “At least he can hold his pants up.”
If you added up all the miles driven for rodeo events, youth and high school sports, and visiting family around the state, the Siegners might have been able to circle the globe. But they have everything they need here, and nearly everyone’s rig is parked out front.
The music channel is playing Martina McBride as pots and pans clang in the kitchen.
Mitch starts telling old stories from his days at both Crane and Oregon. He was part of a 1994 Ducks team that reached the Rose Bowl and helped spur the program toward national relevance. Those around Oregon State now joke that it’s nice to see Mitch wearing orange and black.
Cody and Kelsie return to their phones after a full morning wrangling cattle, with Kaitlyn two hours away competing at a track meet for Crane. Cody quickly perks up and runs outside when he sees smoke coming from the grill.
Thankfully, it’s nothing too serious beyond a little extra char on some of the steaks.
“Cody likes to cook,” Jamie says from the kitchen.
Before long, lunch is up, all prepared by Jamie with some help from Cody: medium-rare steaks seasoned to perfection, roasted potatoes, carrots, Caesar salad, crusty bread and butter. Shortcake with fresh huckleberries and whipped cream for dessert.
The Siegners are starting to talk about logistics for Cody’s move to Corvallis. Not many of these meals or days on the ranch left before football becomes everything.
But even amid the fervor of a year-round college football schedule, there will still be time for family, putting in work on the ranch, and what’s left of high school rodeo season. Cody has Oregon State’s permission to take a few days off from football in July to team rope with Tommy Jack at high school nationals in Wyoming. State championships are up first, June 11-14 in Prineville.
“Gotta get a couple more,” Mitch says.
Cody is a typically reserved person, content to sit with his thoughts, and humble beyond the overused cliché. Yet both of his sisters also describe him as “funny,” which they say some on the outside might not expect from the big, serious cowboy.
His humor is much clearer around the table with family, and a mischievous side emerges when he’s around Tommy Jack. Out on the ranch or on the back of a horse, his shoulders fall, and expressions begin to soften.
In a chaotic and fraught time for college football — amid NIL disputes and court hearings, debates and committees — this quiet afternoon in the country feels a long way from it all.
“With all the crazy stuff going on in the transfer portal and everything, I just like to pride myself on being the kid that says, ‘This is where I’m going, this is where I’m going to be for the next four or five years, and I don’t plan on leaving,’” Cody says.
“Success or no success, I’m gonna be trying to make it work.”
—Ryan Clarke covers college sports for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at RClarke@Oregonian.com or on Twitter/X: @RyanTClarke. Find him on Bluesky: @ryantclarke.bsky.social.