You would think a semi-professional steer wrestler has, at some point in his life, gotten drunk with his buddies, jumped an electrical fence, and tipped a cow. Sam Rauch apparently missed that day in gym class. That’s a strike against him in the Ranger Up book of awesome, but since he’s a former Paratrooper with two combat tours, we’ll sponsor him anyway.
At age 16, Rauch was ranked sixth in the state of Montana for steer wrestling (that’s the one where you chase a calf, jump off your horse and crank his neck around until he’s staring freakishly at the heavens above and falls over from shock). But Rauch wasn’t like the other kids in his neighborhood. While everyone else was using ultra-trained, uber expensive horses to grapple with juvenile bovines, Rauch was from the other side of the tracks and had to borrow his mounts. That resourcefulness is one reason we like him.
The other reason is he’s responsible. While most of us at Ranger Up take pride in being slobbering drunks, Rauch encourages high school students to abstain from drinking (we had to look up the word abstain) and driving. “It’s called Mariah’s challenge,” Rauch says. “About two years ago, a girl (Mariah McCarthy) was killed by a drunk driver. She was my soccer coach as a kid. Her dad started Mariah’s Challenge to get high school kids not to drink, so I try to use my fighting to help raise money for it.”
Raised in Butte, Montana (does a river run through it?), Rauch served four years with the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and had two combat tours of duty-one in each theater. After his ETS, he moved to Broomfield, Colorado and started training MMA when a buddy introduced him to it in 2003.
We had to ask, “Is there one thing you want the Ranger Up faithful to know about you?” His answer-“My wife wears the pants in the family. I try to play it tough, but she calls the shots at the end of the day. Maybe that’s why he’s never been cow tipping. She hasn’t given him permission yet.
Learn more about Mariah’s Challenge here: http://www.mariahschallenge.com/
