A True All-Arounder: Megan Caliendo

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354 – July/August, 2025

By Brittany Vermeer

You might not know it today when watching her lope smooth circles on her Western Pleasure horse, but when she was a kid, Megan Caliendo’s favorite class was Team Penning.

“I didn’t start with all this fancy stuff,” Megan laughs. “I started out as a cowgirl.”

The Caliendo kids were young when the family started showing competitively in Team Penning, Roping, Heeling, and other rodeo events. Megan’s parents, Paul and Marylyn Caliendo, both grew up around horses and saw it as a great way to spend time together as a family. Megan started competing in Heeling when she was just five years old.

“Every weekend, we’d grill out and go chase around cows on horseback,” Marylyn says. “We were at Westworld at a rodeo event, and Megan had gone to the concession stand. She said, ‘Mom, you have to see what they’re doing in this arena. It’s the weirdest thing!’ It was a horse show. That’s how we got hooked, and we got started with Appaloosas.”

Megan’s first horse was a spotted leopard Appaloosa named “Cholla” that her parents bought for $3,500. “While I’d had ponies before, he was my first real horse. I remember understanding it was a big responsibility,” she says. “Team Penning was my favorite class because it’s such a jazzed-up thing. You’re on a time crunch, you have to work as a team, and the cow doesn’t always cooperate.”

Click here to read the complete article
354 – July/August, 2025