Scott Walton Chosen as Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
For his nearly 50 years of involvement in rodeo, Scott Walton was selected as the recipient of the 2023 Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award.
“This is unbelievable,” said Walton, 61. “To even be nominated to be in this category is very special to me and humbling. Just to be nominated with those four other people, I worked with them all and know them all. I have known them for years and they are great people and all deserving, and I guess it was my turn. I’m very honored.”
Other nominees for the 2023 Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award were Edie Longfellow; Kay Bleakly; Jim Fain; and James Harper.
The Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Walton at the PRCA Awards Banquet on Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. (PT) at the South Point in Las Vegas.
“My dad (Allen) started the NILE Rodeo (in Billings, Mont.), and I think he started that sometime in the 1970s,” Walton said. “He started the rodeo there and hired Harry Vold to be the stock contractor and then I helped them when they came to town. I went to college at Montana State and Harry Vold was doing the College Finals at that time (in Bozeman, Mont.) and I was helping.”
In 1982, Vold, a ProRodeo Hall of Fame stock contractor, asked Walton to come to work for him.
“I went to work with Harry then and I learned a lot from that man over the years,” Walton said.
Walton worked for Vold until 1996 when he went to work for ProRodeo Hall of Famer Walt Garrison at Copenhagen & Skoal Tobacco as rodeo supervisor for 13 years.
“We ran the scoreboard and did everything,” Walton said. “In 2010, I started putting scoreboards up and doing jobs on my own with Rick (Sallee).”
Since 2010, Walton has served as the president of Walton Scoreboards Inc.
“In 2013, I moved back to Montana where I’m originally from, I was living in Texas,” Walton said. “Since 2013, I just kept growing my scoreboard video screen business and it has been very, very good to me and my family. Rick and I do rodeos all over the country, Fort Worth, San Antonio, just all over. Rick and I work a lot together. He and I do the scoring and timing at the National Finals Rodeo and have done that for a long time.”
Walton has had a job in one capacity or another at every National Finals Rodeo since 1982.
“The committees I work for and the people and friends I have gained over the years is priceless,” Walton said.
Other winners of the Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award are Donita Barnes (2011); Art and Linda Alsbaugh (2012); Fred and Norma Dorenkamp (2013); Quail Dobbs (2014); Cotton Rosser (2015); Karen Vold (2016), Jim and Julie Sutton (2017), Hadley Barrett (2018); Roy and Virginia Honeycutt (2019); Cindy Rosser (2020); Kay Gay (2021); and Bronc Rumford (2022).
Courtesy of PRCA