Anna Butler, of Walterboro, South Carolina, won the Holiday Auto Group Challenge of the Champions Novice division, sorting 9 head in 230 seconds at the 2026 Cinch RSNC World Finals in Fort Worth, Texas—at 13 years old—in her first year competing in the Challenge of the Champions.
A Cow or Two Away
At the Challenge of the Champions Invitational in Las Vegas in December 2025, she won round after round only to fall short in the final one.
“I almost won it,” Butler said. “I lost it by a cow or two. I won every other round, but the final round, I really wanted it.”
The loss stuck with her, but that frustration turned into fuel for a breakout season. Butler entered the Challenge of the Champions ranked No. 15 with $27,121 in season earnings. For context, a year ago, Butler entered last year’s World Finals with less than $15,000 in lifetime earnings.
“I made the most money in one year that I’ve made my entire life doing this,” Butler said. “That was very exciting.”
Cover Girl, Just in Time
Butler almost didn’t get the horse that would carry her to the title. Then, the morning of the World Finals round robin, her mother delivered the news: the mare, Under The Covers, aka “Cover Girl” (CR Gotcha Covered x E Laine), was hers.
“Mom woke me up and told me she was mine,” Butler said. “I was like, ‘Really?’”
Butler had owned the 2020 double-bred High Brow Cat mare for less than a day before riding her in the class.
“We just kind of clicked really easily,” Butler said. “She’s very easy to move around, and I really appreciate a horse that’ll work with me so we can make each other better.”
Reading the Herd
Butler said her edge in the round robin isn’t speed—it’s strategy, especially when the cattle turned smaller and stickier as the week wore on.
“I’m really good in the gate, and I’m good inside the herd whenever I have to be strategic,” Butler said. “A lot of partners just want to go run in there. I’m really good with working the herd, and that’s really where it came in for me here.”
The strategy paid off in the last round, when Butler needed two clean cows on Cover Girl to close out the title.
“I was the last one out on the cows,” Butler said. “I heard the buzzer go off and I barely had my first cow out. I was like, am I going to make it or not? But once I started peeling off those cows and got at my second one, I knew I was going to make it.”
Young Gun Aims True
At 13, Butler isn’t sure if she’s the youngest rider to win a Challenge of the Champions title—but she wanted the win to prove she was serious when she shared her goal with RSNC leadership and fellow competitors, Logan Wolfe and Tanner Sperle.
“I really wanted to be one of the young guns to come in and prove everybody wrong,” Butler said. “I told them I really want to do it next year and I’m going to win it, and they were like, ‘Okay, go do it, have fun.’ But I don’t really think they believed me.”
That changed the night she walked onto the awards stage, when Wolfe sought her out.
“I’m very proud of you for making it,” Butler said he told her.
