Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i The Team Roping Journal

1. Why every serious roper MUST rope the dummy every day (HINT: It’s the #1 reason Michael Jordan won 6 NBA Championships). 2. The biggest mistake ropers make when facing and the fastest way to avoid it. 3. The 1 ninja trick world champion ropers use to stop their horses from getting injured. 4. A complete guide to spurs & why Jake wears a sharper spur on his right foot. 5. The little-known secret tool Jake uses to encourage his horse to face better. 6. How to prepare your young horse for an electric eye barrier vs. a string barrier. 7. Discover how to develop control through the corner to give your heeler the best shot possible. 8. The drills every roper MUST use on their horse to correct bad…

Too Much Roping? Maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago I just decided to start refocusing on my team roping. I’ve team roped my whole life, but it just kind of blended in with breakaway and a bunch of other things, and now with life and job and all the other things my husband, Ryan, and I do, I don’t have time for all of it. So, I guess I’ve retired from breakaway roping and I’m just focusing on the team roping. I decided that I am tired of being mediocre, so I set some pretty big goals and decided I’m going to work on it and, after a couple years, things are finally pulling together and going the way I want them to. All in…

Catcher Gasperson, 14, of Decatur, Texas, has been on a roll in 2018, picking up Junior NFR #10 wins at the Panhandle Classic in Amarillo, Texas, and at the Oklahoma Winter Championships in Guthrie, Oklahoma, both with his friend Taylet Rademacher. WHO TAUGHT YOU TO ROPE, AND HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN ROPING? My dad, Willy. I’ve been roping since I was 5, and I’m 14 now. WHICH END DO YOU PREFER AND WHY? I like to heel best. I’ve always loved it more than heading. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR PARTNER TAYLET? We met going to ropings and rodeos together. WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO OTHER THAN ROPE? I play football. I’m a left guard. WHAT HORSE HAVE YOU WON MOST OF YOUR JUNIOR NFR #10 POINTS ON,…

Rodeo veteran Travis Graves savvies the significance of horsepower to every roper’s success. He’s learned a few tricks of the trade to help make the best of the trailer time that’s part of every rope horse’s job description. “The hauling is extremely hard on horses, especially when it’s really hot,” said nine-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifier Graves, who’s currently heeling for Clay Try-an. “Common sense goes a long way. Not taking the best possible care of that horse that helps you make a living is lazy, and is just bad business.” Keep ’em Hydrated “I let my horses out every six hours on long trips, no matter what,” Graves said. “And I offer them water every time I get them out. A dehydrated horse is a lot more likely…

Two-time PRCA world champion header Chad Masters currently rides the 2017 AQHA/PRCA Head Horse of the Year, Madison Oak, and the Tennessee native has made top head horses a staple of his $2-million career. Ask Masters what makes a great head horse, and he’ll start with how they score. But when Masters gets a little further into the details of what make a good-scoring mount, his answer might surprise you. Even as pale skinned as I am, I went to a water park once when we were at a rodeo in Kissimmee, Florida. (Stick with me here–you’ll understand how we relate this to scoring soon.) They have this deal where you go get in a tube and they drop it straight out from underneath you. It’s really tall and scary,…

“I went to heading and I tried for three more years, and in the fourth year I finally won it.” – Brandon Gonzales Brandon Gonzales is originally from Seboyeta, New Mexico, a small village part of a Spanish land grant formed in the 18th century. For years, the 7 header and 9 heeler, who grew up roping maverick cattle on the mountains like generations of his family had done, had been trying to win a New Mexico Rodeo Association team roping title. “I usually rope with my brother out there, because that’s where we’re from,” Gonzales, who now calls Li-pan, Texas, home, said. “It actually meant a whole lot. He pulled his groin and couldn’t rope at the Finals, but we roped together most of the year.” Gonzales roped with…

Lara Lee Hogg, Jose “Pepe” Briseño, and his brother, Alfonso, wrapped up the month of April at the World Series of Team Roping Qualifier event produced by Mike Crouch’s European Team Roping Championship in Voghera, Italy. Hogg, an Argyle, Texas, header, had roped with Crouch after reading about his ropings and deciding to gift her daughter—a then high-school graduate and fellow roper—a cowboy trip to Italy. “It’s really social,” Hogg said of the ETRC ropings. “I mean, it’s social in the States, too, but there, they usually serve some kind of meal at the jackpots, and it’s really a gathering of people. Don’t get me wrong—they’re still very competitive and it’s a really good roping; really well produced. And, just like here in the States, if you need something, the…

So often we talk about how to ride the corner, how to deliver our ropes, and how to get in time with a steer. But without having the basic details of horsemanship and equipment down, we might be sabotaging ourselves before we ever leave the box. Paying attention to things like rein, stirrup, and tie-down length can make a little difference that goes a long way in your heeling. 1 Rein Length I’ve worked on this with nearly everybody at my schools. I want to find a good balance in my reins. I don’t want them to be too short where I’m holding on my horse or too long where I’m scrambling and having to make big moves to get a reaction. I want my rein length somewhere in the…

Rocky Staples Custom Bit “With any bit, I like it because I can ride it on that particular horse. With this one, I can pull, without getting a harsh reaction. If he goes to running into it, it’s got a later reaction where I can pull him up into the bridle and regain control if he leans into it too strongly. I want him to be able to be leaning in a bit, but if I really need the extra pull when a horse gets strong, this allows me to take a holt so he’s not just on his own.” – Kory Koontz, 21-time WNFR heeler rockystaplesbitandspur.com…

I’m not a naturally confident person—I never really have been. That’s what hurts me the most—my confidence gets down a lot. I’ve gotten better about it, and one thing I’ve figured out is that I need to surround myself with positive people. My wife, Josie, is a very positive person, and she is always trying to pick me up. She’s pretty knowledgeable about my horses and my roping, and she’ll tell me to get on something else if I need to. But if I’m down, she tries to pick me up and tells me I can do it. It’s also really important for me to have a partner who is positive and trying to pick me up. When I first started, I roped with Matt Zancanella. He was the most…

A cow horse is a cow horse is a cow horse. At least, that was true in the old days. But as the sport of team roping has exploded, so have the nuances in breeding, causing heelers to increasingly look to the cutting industry for the brightest shining stars. Case in point: The three best heel horses in the rodeo world last season—Jake Long’s Colonel, Billie Jack Saeben’s Kevin, and Brady Minor’s Sug—pack the blood of Colonel Freckles, Peppy San, Doc O’Lena, and High Brow Hickory. For the record, the latter sired cutting legend High Brow Cat, whose offspring have earned $76 million ... and counting. High Brow Cat is the second-most valuable Quarter Horse stallion of all time because his get are cow-smart, quick-footed, can crawl on their bellies,…

Steve Norris, of the TX Ranch in Colorado Springs, Colorado, invited Air Force Academy rodeo team and wrestling team members, as well as some in the Wounded Warrior program, to their spring branding May 12. The cadets were the ground crew for Norris’ son-in-law, 23-time PRCA World Champion Trevor Brazile, and grandson, Treston Brazile, as well as other local ropers. “It’s such an honor to have guys who have been fighting in the wars overseas for us to allow us to be out here raising these cattle, and you know they give us the opportunity to do the things we do,” Norris said. “A lot of praise goes out to those guys. It’s an honor to have them out there helping us.” Veterans associated with the Remount Foundation, run through…

The weekend of May 4–5 saw 24 ladies take home more than $80,000 at World Series of Team Roping qualifiers alone, a mark that World Series of Team Roping president Denny Gentry can’t remember being matched in his tenure as the head of the team roping association. The WSTR had four qualifiers in the United States from Florida to Washington, but location did not make any difference for the ladies who were collecting checks. Of the four qualifiers, eight divisions were won by teams that had one female roper. Most impressive was the Las Cruces, New Mexico, qualifier produced by Mathews Land and Cattle, in which the ladies were on the winning team of four of the seven divisions. “When you look at the total percentage of ladies roping, their…

Born and raised in Ellensburg, Washington, Jerry Anderson became a PRCA cowboy before team roping events were required in the lineup. “It was kind of a hit-and-miss deal,” Anderson recalled. “Back in the mid-’50s and early ’60s, there might have been three or four rodeos a year in Washington and Oregon that even had team roping. They got more popular in the ’60s and ’70s.” As a calf roper, Anderson remembers big wins at Puyallup in 1958 and 1965, and victorious go-rounds at Ellensburg, where he worked the chutes for multiple decades. Fellow PRCA cowboy and longtime friend Jack Wallace remembers Anderson’s devotion to the sport. “We went to some rodeos and jackpotted together a lot,” Wallace stated. “He was very diligent and practiced a lot. He wasn’t a real…

At 37, Josh Love has a lot on his plate, and when asked how he’s doing, “Ducking and swinging,” might be his response. He hints to how well he’s cut out for it, though, with his easy tone and brief chuckle. Love, who recently won the #12 with header D.J. Tecklenburg at the USTRC Mile-Hi Championships, was raised mostly by his grandparents along northern Colorado’s Front Range, and grew up with a rope in hand. “My grandparents had a lot of land,” Love said. “I wouldn’t say it was a ranch, but my grandpa and my whole family roped and had horses and all that.” Love rodeoed as a header well into his 20s, even having fun riding broncs a bit, and was working as a lead pipefitter when he…