Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i The Team Roping Journal

While many of the top Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association competitors have multiple chances throughout their careers to win gold buckles and titles in the events they compete in, there is one award that a competitor has only one shot at: the Resistol Rookie of the Year. This award is given out to first-year card members who are the high-money winners of their events at the end of the season, including the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Resistol, one of the original sponsors of the PRCA and official hat of the WNFR, celebrated the 2016 Resistol Rookies with its second annual luncheon to honor each of the recipients. The rookies received airfare, tickets to the rodeo and hotel rooms to attend the special occasion. Five Resistol Rookies qualified for the WNFR and…

SMOOTH CORNERS, FAST FINISHES A smooth corner is the most important thing about heeling because it sets up the rest of the run, whether you’re planning to heel the steer on the first legal hop or track him across the pen. You want to be set up to heel when the steer leaves you, and that comes from the way you ride the corner. Higher-number guys are looking to heel as soon as that steer is legal, and sometimes lower-number ropers drive to the steer and rope him after he’s turned and hopping. But if you have a good position and good fluid corner, heeling is easy. With this horse, I really had to work on keeping his separation good around the corner. He was an ex-cutter, and he would…

Practice is your preparation. It’s the place for either developing and sharpening your skills or maintaining them. Practice is also for the purpose of training or maintaining your horse. So practice encompasses different aspects of what you’re trying to accomplish as your end goals. What’s the best kind of practice? Is it going fast, trying to be quick and make fast runs? Or should it be about making slower, more methodical, correct kinds of runs? I like to mix things up a little. In teaching schools for 30 years, probably the most common theme of a roping school is getting people to slow down and do things right. A lot of times you have to get them to slow down, because they’re cutting corners and skipping steps. They’re trying to…

WHY DON’T THOSE GUYS JUST BACK OFF A LITTLE BIT AND GET ’EM ALL CAUGHT? I hear it year after year from people who either buy a ticket or gather round a fire with family and friends to watch the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo presented by Polaris RANGER: They’re talking about the Top 15 teams in the world, and why from a seat somewhere it looks so simple. Why not go with the strategy of roping 10 steers and getting paid, when legs place in so many rounds and not a single team caught 10 steers at Rodeo’s Super Bowl in 2016? From the dirt side of that fence, the best in the business tell me it’s not nearly as easy as it might seem. The fast setup is such…

Jackie Hobbs-Crawford is the winningest female roper in Women’s Professional Rodeo Association history, with 17 world titles to her name. In 2016, she took the All-Around title along with the breakaway and heading crowns. And as she prepares to have her first child, a boy, with husband and NFR header Charly Crawford, her 2016 WPRA All-Around World Champion buckle hangs on her belt. “I feel like the All-Around has always been an achievement that means you worked really hard and excelled in more than one event,” Crawford, of Stephenville, Texas, said. “It could be easy to let one event slack off, but the All-Around is tough and I’ve got to be on my game in everything.” Crawford rode T-Boy, her 12-year-old gelding, in the breakaway and tie-down; Sailor, the 9-year-old…

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association celebrated its rising starts in Las Vegas at the Permit Member Challenge of the Year Rodeo at the South Point Equestrian Center this past Dec. 1, 2016. Team roping champions Jordan Tye, Canby, Ore., and Ty Arnold, Midway, Texas, hadn’t met until they were in the warm-up arena. The PRCA contacted them and said they had each qualified but not with their regular partners. So, they texted back and forth, met after they got here and went out and did their jobs aboard borrowed horses. “We met for the first time after the contestant meeting,” Tye said. “We talked a little bit about strategy and both felt like all we needed to do was catch.” Both are juniors in college and are planning to finish…

"THEY’RE SO TOUGH AT SUCH A YOUNG AGE." The Women’s Professional Rodeo Association’s roping division amended its rules for 2017, allowing girls under 18 years old to join their mothers, sisters and friends as full roping members, a move that looks to expand the association for the “wolfie” young guns, roping director Patti McCutcheon said. “We’ve had some good girls that were interested in the calf roping and team roping at the Finals in Waco for a while,” McCutcheon said. “Rylie Fabrizio had to sit on the fence and watch her mom and sister rope when she could have beat any of us there. There have been girls who were so good and had to wait until they were 18, and all of those years they could have been roping.…

From my perspective and having been out there so many years it seems to me that the style has changed when it comes to handling cattle. I’d always roped and tried to slow the steer down to make as smooth a corner as possible, especially in averages, to make things easier on my heeler. But that’s about too slow these days. It’s almost like you have to make a rodeo run every time—even in a lot of averages—to win. Even the jackpots are so tough now that if you try to handle the steer to set things up and make it easier on your heeler you’re almost behind. I’m not saying you should get careless about it, but you can’t take so much time on the handle that it’s impossible…

Heading is all about the start, from the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo to Cheyenne Frontier Days and everywhere in between. For PRCA header Luke Brown, his mount lives up to his name—Rock-star—any time he’s behind a barrier. “He’s so flat and so easy to score,” Brown said about the 17-year-old palomino gelding he often refers to as “Yella”, but who is registered as Super Gold Baron. “It’s been super easy for me to catch on him. He leaves the box headed toward the cow, and that’s always been my biggest thing—I want my horse headed straight to the cow when he leaves the box. He’s real easy about letting me pull on him in the box and when I nod, turn him loose and he drops and heads right to…

Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifiers Riley and Brady Minor of Ellensburg, Wash., won the Columbia River Circuit year-end with $29,977 a man, ahead of WNFR rookie qualifiers Garrett Rogers and Jake Minor. Rogers and Minor earned $23,688 each in their circuit. Hayes Smith and Russell Cardoza finished third in the standings but won the average at the CRFR in Yakima, Wash., with a time of 14.5 seconds on three head, winning $4,964 a man.…

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Spinnies 2016 FAN ’ S FAVORITE HEADER KALEB DRIGGERS Two decades ago in the muggy summer heat of South Georgia, a part-time horse trainer slipped off one of his good ones and plucked his son from the saddle of his ornery white pony they called Frosty. He helped his shorter-than-average kid up onto the big bay he called Roper, and from that moment on the team roping world would never be the same. As long as Laura Driggers can remember, her son Kaleb had a rope in his hand. Kaleb idolized his dad, Nick, who roped calves in his younger years and team roped, too, in between working at the Federal Aviation Administration and training horses. Nick Driggers’ passion for making good horses would stick with Kaleb—as the desire to…