A Legacy Etched in Stone: A family drives generations of impact for Cowboy Motorsports
Friday, December 19, 2025
Media Contact: Sophia Fahleson | Digital Communications Specialist | 405-744-7063 | sophia.fahleson@okstate.edu
Fluorescent lights, clanging tools and teamwork at its best. At Oklahoma State University, students spend years learning in classroom environments. For Cowboy Motorsports members, the shop is their classroom.
“Cowboy Motorsports is a club where students can get hands-on experiences and learn a variety of skills,” said Ethan Stone, 2025-2026 Cowboy Motorsports president and biosystems engineering junior.
Every year, Cowboy Motorsports members work together to design and build a quarter-scale tractor from scratch. Members use a digital software program, Solidworks, to design the tractor from the ground up, Ethan Stone said, adding this is the longest part of the process. Once the tractor design is finished, Ditch Witch donates and cuts the metal needed for the tractor frame.
The club is part of the OSU Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, but students of any major are welcome.
Students can join regardless of their prior mechanical or engineering experience. Older and more experienced club members teach the newer members anything they want to learn, whether that is building the tractor itself or skills pertaining to life and leadership, said Derek DeGroot, Cowboy Motorsports 2025-2026 vice president and agricultural systems technology senior.
“Last year we had a few members say they had never pulled a trailer before,” DeGroot said. “So we took an afternoon and taught them how to hook up and pull a gooseneck. We’re always happy to teach.”
Skills members gain in the club extend further than mechanics. Members learn how to think through processes, problem solve, work in a team and lead others, Ethan Stone said.
The team hosts two fundraisers per year. The first is a pulled pork sale during OSU Homecoming. The second is a lawnmower clinic in which community members can bring in their lawnmowers to be serviced.
With fundraising support, the club travels to Peoria, Illinois, each June to compete in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers International 1/4 Scale Tractor Competition. At the contest, teams from across the nation put their student-built tractors through an intense test of durability, maneuverability and pulling, DeGroot said.
Because Cowboy Motorsports is a smaller club – usually around 10 people – members become more of a “family away from family,” Ethan Stone said. The members spend weeks working together to build the tractor and then competing.
However, this “family” would not be possible without John Solie, grandfather of brothers Ethan, Jared and Seth Stone. Solie, a former OSU biosystems and agricultural engineering professor, co-founded Cowboy Motorsports with Emeritus Professor Ron Elliot and the late Marvin Stone, also a former professor in biosystems and agricultural engineering. The professors took the team to their first competition in 1998.
“Dr. Stone isn’t related to us, but he worked closely with our grandfather,” Ethan Stone said.
The professors wanted to provide students with a unique hands-on learning experience, Ethan Stone said. The goal of Cowboy Motorsports was to give students a chance to use what they learned in the classroom and apply it to real-world situations, he said.
Solie spent time as the club’s adviser, and his involvement continued after he retired. Solie passed away in 2019, but his legacy lives on in the Cowboy Motorsports club today, Ethan Stone said.
“When Grandpa was the adviser, Cowboy Motorsports had a tractor with a drive train in it that Cowboy Motorsports designed and patented,” said Jared Stone, 2024-2025 Cowboy Motorsports president and first-year veterinary student. “The three of us brothers have tried to adapt that innovation into tractors we build.”
Cowboy Motorsports was a big part of the Stone brothers’ lives from a young age, Jared Stone said, adding they heard a lot about the club while growing up.
“I remember going out to the biosystems lab as little kids and playing on the tractors as they were being built,” Jared Stone said. “Where we got started in the club was just going out there with Grandpa.”
When the oldest Stone brother, Seth, began school at OSU, he sought a hands-on experience. As a biosystems engineering major, he became the first Stone brother to join the club in 2019.
“Cowboy Motorsports fit well with Seth’s major, and he had the support from the biosystems and agricultural engineering department to succeed within the club,” Ethan Stone said.
Following in his brother’s footsteps and continuing the Stone legacy, Jared Stone joined the club in 2021. Throughout Jared Stone’s undergraduate journey, his eyes were set on veterinary school, so he approached the club with a different perspective, Jared Stone said. He knew the club involved problem solving and critical thinking, which he would need for veterinary school, he said.
“Most of the time, we come at a problem thinking one way,” Jared Stone said. “With Cowboy Motorsports, we have to come at it multiple different ways and be able to solve problems with what we have. It taught me a different way of thinking.”
The youngest Stone brother, Ethan, is continuing the family legacy and joined Cowboy Motorsports in 2023. Like his oldest brother, he is also a biosystems engineering major. For Ethan Stone, the club is more than just applying what he learns in the classroom.
“What sticks with me the most are the skills I have built,” Ethan Stone said. “It’s not just the designing and building of the tractor but also being able to improvise and adapt to unforeseen challenges.”
Members put these improvisation skills to work at the 2025 competition, Ethan Stone said. Toward the end of the competition, the rear axle on the team’s tractor broke.
“We had to think through the process carefully as a team,” Ethan Stone said. “It obviously was not what we wanted to happen, but we all came together as a club to evaluate how to address the situation.” The team did not win, but they learned a lot along the way, he added.
From the initial creation to now, Cowboy Motorsports and the Stone family continues to impact students and shape them to be leaders, Ethan Stone said.
“The drive to keep pushing is just something that’s in our family,” Jared Stone said. “We want to continue building the legacy of always being willing to teach others and try something new.”
Story by Baylee Smith | Cowboy Journal