Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i The Team Roping Journal

Here it is, the heat—sometimes literally—of the team roping season. Whether you’re an amateur or a fan of the pro game, the sport has reached its full swing for the year. As usual, there are plenty of great how-to pieces in this issue to keep your game sharp. Riley Minor talks about the little things it takes to set up a faster run, Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper both talk about horsepower, and Jake Long gets granular explaining the specifics to heeling behind a neck catch. Pulling back a bit, we’ve got four features that really encapsulate the past, present and future of the sport. In the past category, Kendra Santos takes some time to honor the latest team roper to enter the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, Jerold Camarillo.…

The Greeley (Colo.) Stampede, the Caldwell (Idaho) Nite Rodeo and the Snake River Stampede in Nampa, Idaho, will all add equal money in 2016 to both the head side and the heel side of the team roping, thanks to a rule voted on by the PRCA’s Board of Directors this February. “Bylaw B15.4 Finals was changed by the PRCA Board of Directors at its January 25 meeting and it affects five rodeos which have a finals performance—Tucson, Nampa, Denver, Greeley and Caldwell,” PRCA spokesman Jim Bainbridge said. “The pertinent section of the amended bylaw reads: A Rodeo Committee requesting to hold a finals in its rodeo must add at least $12,500 purse money to each event which has a finals and have equal money in the team roping.” Two winter-rodeo…

Number and End: 4+ Heeler Hometown: Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico Association of Preference: Local ropings are my favorite, but I do love the World Series. To be honest, I like to stick to local ropings. Rope of Choice: Rattler and Cactus Ropes Your Favorite Jackpot: I like to go to Lance Allen’s Mountain States Cattle Co. ropings, Blake Nelson’s ropings and my H2A Ropings, of course. I love the Borracho Roping I produce every June. A lot of people have fun, and it pays really well. There are a lot of prizes and all of the people wait on that roping. Biggest Win: Riding bulls, that’s when I used to win money! That’s when it was fun when I was young. I have won some USTRC ropings and some open jackpots,…

Barrier broke: Teaching young horses to run through a barrier is a must in the timed events, and holding a barrier up time and time again for an uncooperative horse can be a pain. Set-Up: Put up a “wand” on each side of the roping box, meeting in the middle, and you can ride your horse BOTH ways, into or out of the box. The barrier will always come back to center. You don’t have to get off to wire it up, or have someone stand there holding it repeatedly, because the system resets itself. Perks: It helps young ropers get over “looking” at the barrier. It will put their focus back on the cattle so when they get to the rodeo, they are comfortable. Trainers use it to encourage…

It took 200 rodeos to win an International Professional Rodeo Association world title in 1976, but at the time, Montana’s Bill Parker didn’t mind one bit. “I was just a straight gypsy” Parker, who had won the College National Finals Rodeo in 1975 and went on to qualify for three Wrangler National Finals Rodeos, two in team roping and one in tie-down roping, said. “You never had money—it all went for gas and entry fees. Back then, you had five or six guys in a truck, and you had a cigar box on the dash of the truck. If you were going from Bangor, Maine, to Kansas City, everyone put $20 in. And if you ran out, you put $20 more in. Entry fees and fuel—that’s all we cared about.…

Get Specific When I’m practicing, instead of just having a good day and thinking everything feels good, I want to know exactly what I am looking at, what I am seeing, what steps I’m executing to make everything feel good. When you get to a high-pressure situation, all of the emotion comes in and then you have to catch to win this or that—that’s what starts clouding our judgment. So when all of the emotion comes, I try to turn it off and go through those steps I practiced and executed. I fall back to those steps in my roping to push the emotion and the anxiety out of my head. I go through my checklist. I can enjoy winning as soon as that’s over. Focus I want to know…

I’ve been working on training a horse, while practicing for myself on another of my older horses and keeping my good horse (LB) in shape and not really roping much on him. For a guy who ropes for a living, there are a lot of aspects to maintaining and practicing different things in your roping. It seems like I’ve always had one or two prospect kind of horses that I’m working on. It’s also nice to have two good, solid horses in the lineup for going and competing to make your living. If you rope a lot, you need a practice horse to give you some runs for yourself, too. The game plan for most of the guys I’ve known over the years is to have multiple kinds of horses…

that are important to them. That’s part of the fun really. Here I am, I’m 55 years old, and I’m blessed to be able to still be in the game at a level where I’m able to be around the very best ropers that there are, and Jade is definitely in my book on the top tier.” Fast forward to 2016, and Cooper’s new heeling technique, paired with Begay’s heading prowess, is showcased alongside Corkill and three-time world champ Clay Tryan at the new Elite Rodeo Athletes' Premier Tour. The result has been nothing but smoking-fast times and sheer dominance. The two teams battled it out in 2015 in the PRCA regular-season world standings (with both falling short at the very end to Wrangler National Finals standouts Aaron Tsinigine and…

Prior to 1995, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s team roping world title was designed to only go to one cowboy. The top-earning roper—header or heeler—was given the world champion buckle. Once a year-end finals was instituted in 1959, the top 15 ropers in the world qualified—regardless of what end they roped—then invited their partners. As a result, between 1929 and 1994, 50 team roping world titles were awarded to only one person. In that same era, there were 15 times when “co-champions” for the world title were named. In every case, it was a header and a heeler who remained partners the entire year and had the exact same earnings after the NFR. (Of course, three of those years 1976-1978, the NFR average champions were named world champions.) Interestingly, from…

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association kicked off its 2016 partnership with the Mexican Rodeo Federation (FMR) this winter, with the first rodeo in Chihuahua, Mexico, Feb. 28, with the Rodeo de Aniversario. Francisco de la Torre and Manuel Jáuregui won the first rodeo with a time of 15.01 seconds on two head. The FMR/PRCA Finals is set for Oct. 1 and 2 in Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua, Mexico, and the Finals average winners and circuit champions will gain entry into the 2017 Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Kissimmee, Fla.…

The Days of ’47 Rodeo is the first former PRCA rodeo to make the jump to an ERA tour stop, the ERA announced this May. Held July 19-23, 2016, the Days of ’47 Rodeo will pay out $350,000 over three days of qualifying rounds and two days of an ERA Premier Tour event. The 36 invited professional rodeo contestants will vie for a chance to move into an ERA performance and their share of $100,000. The overall high score/fast time from the qualifying round will compete in Saturday’s ERA televised performance. All existing ERA athletes will compete in both Friday and Saturday night performances with a total purse of $200,000. Contestants could register for the qualifying rounds at erarodeo.com until June 3, with 100-percent of their $300 entry fee going…

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they’ll get a green horse and they can learn together. That’s almost impossible. No matter what level roper you are, you are going to be as good as your horse. You need a horse that allows you to concentrate on your scoring and roping. And if you’re distracted by what your horse is lacking it takes away from your roping. A lot of ropers have a hard time getting out of the barrier, roping the steer and handling the steer, so that’s enough to concentrate on. If your horse is green you’re all over the place. It just makes it so much harder. At any level, having a horse that suits you will help you be so much more successful and…

The recent generations of great team ropers—with the likes of Clay and Jake Smith, Spencer Mitchell and Russell Cardoza and many, many more—have grown up in an era that saw dummy ropings emerge as a rite of passage for up-and-coming talent. Rope companies have invested in dummy roping competitions across the country, encouraging their endorsees to lend a hand every chance they get when there are kids twirling twine in competition. For kids, dummy ropings are the first place to test their mettle in the fires of competition while developing key rope-handling skills they’ll use the rest of their careers. Walt Eddy helped kick off the USTRC’s Junior Looper Championships at the Cinch National Finals of Team Roping 20 years ago, when they simply held the dummy ropings in a…