Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i The Team Roping Journal

Dear Roper, A few months ago, I was picking Cesar de la Cruz’s brain about some great horsemen he’s worked with. He brought up two greats he’s watched—Dakota Kirchenschlager and Colter Todd—who started with wild, barely halter-broke colts and took them, over the course of many years, to the bright lights of Las Vegas for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. If you read this column with any regularity, you know that great horses and their stories are my entry point to this sport. I ran it by contributing editor Julie Mankin to see if she was up for the task of tracking down a few more guys who rode horses at the Finals that they’d put the first rides on, and Julie—like me—was hooked on the story. The result of…

When three-time National Finals Rodeo heeler Dakota Kirchenschlager stepped away from professional rodeo in 2016, this is the moment he dreamed of. On Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, Kirchenschlager came tight on his fourth steer at second callback in the American Rope Horse Futurity Association’s World Championship, taking the lead in the roping with an aggregate score of a 918.57. He was aboard one of the youngest horses in the field—4-year-old X My Ich (by Cat Ichi, out of Stylish Sana by Docs Stylish Oak), owned by Darren Johnson—and had to sweat out the high call team of Trevor Brazile and American Greed from the stripping chute. Brazile took a no time, and Kirchenschlager and Johnson were suddenly $32,000 richer for winning both the main average and the 4-year-old incentive, plus…

Baxter Black [Rodeo Re-Ride Audio Books] baxterblack.com, $40 Your favorite Baxter Black cowboy tales are now available for download and easy, entertaining listening on the rodeo road. The set includes “Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?,” “Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?” and “Ride Cowboy, Ride: 8 Seconds Ain’t That Long.” This new twist on these old favorites comes in the voice of Baxter Black himself, as he reads his text exactly how it was meant to be heard, delivering to his listeners a heightened sense of the hilarity and sincerity that weaves throughout his cowboy characters’ lives. NRS [NRS Turnout Blanket] nrsworld.com, $125 The new NRS Turnout Blanket features a 1200 Denier breathable, waterproof ripstop poly outer shell with breathable 210 denier lining and 250 grams of poly fill. An adjustable…

Four-time NFR and 1986 NFR average champion Paul Petska, 71, began building Petska Bits, his claim to fame, in the early ’90s, while rodeoing full time. Petska, who now resides in Oklahoma, purchased a few bits along the way that never gave him the feel he desired. He would revamp bits to his own personal liking—which later on became the bits ridden around the word—Petska Bits. “I’ve always just kind of played around with stuff mainly because I’d go into a tack trailer and buy a handful of bits and they wouldn’t work,” Petska said. “I would find a shank that I liked, take the shank out to my trailer, and I would drill me a couple holes in the shanks.” Petska worked on changing an original bit for years…

SCHMIDT My swing has been way too tight, and my first two swings are almost a wasted motion. They don’t have direction or power, and they’re just kind of lost. So I’ve been roping slower steers and seeing less in the practice pen so I have to find my target right away and pick up my rope with purpose from the start. I’ve always looked at the base of the left horn as my target, but I think when I’ve been picking my first swing up I’ve been looking at the general area of the cow rather than making a point of focusing directly at the target. The more I focus on that, the better my swing is, and the faster I’m ready to throw. I’m trying not to get…

We tend to rave about winter jackpots in Arizona, but one of the marquee team ropings in all of America happens annually in sunny north Florida. Now in its 16th year, the National Team Roping League (NTRL) Finals is coming off a 2020 in which it drew some 2,500 teams and paid out a half-million dollars in cash, plus well over $100,000 in prizes. A shoot-out guarantees $14,000 for first place but usually pays closer to $20,000, plus saddles, buckles and jackets. It’s the WSTR Finale of the Atlantic seaboard; the BFI Week of the Southeast. ENTER UP Here’s the thing—anybody in the country can show up and rope at the NTRL Finals Jan. 27-31, 2021. Yes, there are NTRL qualifiers that award shoot-outs to the finals. However, when you pull…

RECORDS ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN Chad Masters (who’ll head for defending World Champion Heeler Wesley Thorp this month) and Jade Corkill (who’ll heel for reigning World Champion Header Clay Smith) set the 3.3-second NFR and world team roping record in Vegas in 2009. It was matched at the 2017 NFR by Driggers and Junior Nogueira (who’ll heel for Cody Snow in Arlington; Brock Hanson and Ryan Motes were 3.3 at the rodeo in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 2012 to share in that world record, by the way). What’s nuts is that Hall of Fame dream team Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper’s 26-year-old NFR average record of 59.1 seconds on 10 steers still stands. “I’ve always felt like the average is the big ticket and the ace in the hole…

THE FINALE The 2020 Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale is set for Dec. 5–12, 2020, at the South Point Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The richest Western sports event of the year, the Finale, will award ruby-encrusted Gist Buckles, as it has every year since its inception. RidePass will again stream each roping, so friends, family and fans at home can watch as the event hands out the largest checks in the sport of team roping to ropers from across the globe and all walks of life. For more information on the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale, please see the special Finale XV program that arrived with this issue. Courtesy Gist Silversmiths HEARTLAND HAYDAY Ryan Richardson and Blane Chapman won $29,670, Cactus Saddles and Gist…

Wesley Thorp, PRCA’s reigning World Champion Heeler, came to the American Rope Horse Futurity World Championships in Fort Worth’s John Justin Arena Oct. 23 to change the game. Thorp left the pristine, traditional horse show runs to the rest of the field. He was so confident in his 2014 gelding Juice Up Cat (by Jazarell Cat out of Juiced Up Jordie by Short of Santana) that he put on a heeling clinic, firing on or near the corner in aggressive fashion, making Open-caliber jackpot runs over four rounds to garner 933.84 points and take home the win at high call, worth $20,000, plus another $7,000 he banked in the go-rounds. “I had Cody (Snow) help me, and I told him I thought we should just try and go make some…

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Sarah Toole is in the midst of her freshman year in high school, but the 15-year-old switch-ender is no stranger to the roping arena, or winning, for that matter. August’s USTRC Alabama Championships, produced in Montgomery, Alabama, by Allen’s Roping Productions, earned Toole a total of $5,905, also earning her a comfortable No. 1 spot above the Cinch Ladies Standings field, with a nearly $3,000-lead over Boone, Colorado’s Holly Ricken at No. 2. Winning the #8.5 heading for Nick Conner, in which the pair took a time of 26.97 on three head, garnered Toole her biggest check of the event in the amount of $5,180 for the team. On the head side, she also cashed checks for taking second in the #10.5 with Cal Green, as well as winning fast…

Question: Trevor, I watched you at the American Rope Horse Futurity Association’s World Championship on the grey horse that you’ve done videos on now since he was 3. Can you tell us more about the journey with that horse that we didn’t see on teamropingjournal.com? — Kacey Kobza, Fort Lupton, Colorado Answer: I call that horse Firecracker. He’s by FirewaterOnTheRocks, and the dam’s side was all run, too. The most challenging horses I’ve ridden are the ones bred to run like him. I’ve always been able to add speed to cow horses, but with these ones, it’s about discipline. It goes against the lessons I learned on the other horses. Firecracker has really taught me a lot. With him, he felt so talented and so good from the start, that…

Riley Minor’s RK Tuff Trinket, who’s best known as “Bob,” is the 2020 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Purina Head Horse of the Year. It’s his second time to take this prestigious honor, as Bob also struck in 2018. On the heeling side, big brother Brady Minor’s Leos Highbrow, aka “Sug,” and Logan Medlin’s Nita Win Playboy, who’s “Drago” down at the barn, tied for PRCA Purina Heel Horse of the Year per a vote of the top 25 in the world. All three of these equine superstars are priceless to their people—and also very low maintenance. —By Kendra Santos RILEY MINOR’S BOB, 19 What Makes Him Great? Bob just has so much try every time he leaves the box. He never cheats you out of a throw, no matter if…

For one person to start with an unruly 2-year-old and mold it into one of the best head or heel horses of all time takes an extraordinary bond, a lot of patience and, let’s face it, a little help from providence. The following four champions have trained—and continue to train—other great horses, but their favorite is always that project-turned-love-of-their-life that shaped their own legacy. MO AND BANNER Denny Watkins was winning the World at the ’78 NFR—until the 10th round. “I lost the gold buckle on that last steer,” remembers Watkins, whom friends call “Mo” (from the nickname Denimo). “I rode back to my trailer, stepped off Banner and uncinched him. Took his bridle off and was just leaning against the door thinking, ‘I cannot believe it; I had it…

With huge payouts and Finale qualifications on the line, the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Title Fights and Heartland Finale at the Circle T Arena in Hamilton, Texas, paid out a whopping $577,120, plus prizes, in the first event of its kind outside of Arizona. Borrowing its name from the big February roping at Arizona’s Dynamite Arena, Title Fights of the Heartland kicked off with the Gold Buckle Beer Open on Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, hosting some of the top ropers in the country. Tyler Wade of Terrell, Texas, teamed up with Helena, Montana’s Chase Tryan, to make short work of four head, turning in a time of 26.72 to win the roping and $10,300. The #14.5 Title Fights Roping came down to the short go, and Matt Davis…

On the heels of the magazine’s industry-first rope horse Breeder’s Guide in 2020, The Team Roping Journal opened space for the 2021 Breeder’s Guide Oct. 23, 2020. With the explosion of the Ariat World Series of Team Roping’s payouts and the growth of the rope horse futurity industry, the demand for top-level horses has never been higher. Ropers across the globe are turning to breeding and raising their own, looking to build on the horses already in their programs. Ropers are searching for premium prospects, proven broodmares and the best studs in the game to help guarantee big wins for years to come. “Last year, 38 owners and breeding programs took advantage of our efforts to improve marketing vehicles for stallion owners,” TRJ Editor Chelsea Shaffer said. “We provide the…

“This is the new normal for me,” C. Thomas Howell responded when asked if he’ll keep roping if things ever return to “normal,” post-COVID-19. Howell, 54, is a lifelong Hollywood actor. The son of venerable stuntman Chris Howell, he grew up on set, had his first gig at age 6 and won the part of Tyler—the neighbor kid in the 1982 blockbuster, E.T.—by showing Steven Spielberg he could handle a BMX bike and a Marlboro Red. He was 12. On one hand, he always knew that’s where he was meant to be. “When I started working,” Howell recalled, “it wasn’t a special transition because I knew that’s what I was going to do my whole life. It wasn’t something I chased. It wasn’t something I went to college for. It…

5 FLAT with Junior Nogueira CREATING THE CORNER Teaching a young horse the correct corner will set him up for a lifetime of success. Here’s how. I chose this set of photos from this day in the practice pen because I was really working on my horse’s corner, and they show what I was really trying accomplish. He’s a 6-year-old I used to call Baby Jackyl, but now we call him Spirit. I’ve been working on improving my corner on all of my horses by improving my own riding and their responsiveness to my hands, feet and body. { Vital Stats } AGE: 30 ROPE: Powerline Lite MH by Classic NFR QUALIFICATIONS: 7 PARTNER: Cody Snow HOME: Presidente Prudente, SP, Brazil CAREER EARNINGS: $1,253,997 1 Running down the…

LEADERS OF THE PACK Luke Brown and Joseph Harrison will be joining forces for just the second time in 2020 when they back into the NFR box together. Their $103,000 win at The American at AT&T Stadium in Arlington in March—of which $50,000 per man counted in the world standings—set the stage for a stellar regular season. While those who didn’t have a significant winter strike found it tough, if not impossible, to catch up, Brown sailed through the regular season roping with Patrick Smith. When Smith came up short of the Top 15 cut—as did Harrison’s other 2020 partners, Wyatt Imus and Lane Ivy—regular-season champs Brown and Harrison were a natural fit for the Finals. Coming out on top in the regular season is a first for both Brown…

“It feels weird, and I told my mom about this. She told me since I felt this way that I should call Matt (Sherwood) and talk to him about it because he’s on the other side of the deal. I don’t feel like I deserve to make the Finals because I honestly didn’t feel like I finished the year good. I really didn’t do that good, I just got lucky and placed that one time and it was enough to get me in. After the first steer at the semifinals was a sigh of relief. I knew I was in. I knew that if the math wasn’t wrong then I was for sure in and it was a huge sigh of relief.” —Brenten Hall, Two-time NFR qualifier, talking about sneaking…