Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i The Team Roping Journal

Dear Roper, The turn of the season—and the shorter days it brings with it—is upon us, as we say farewell to long, late summer nights in the arena and have to get more creative with our schedules. But at the same time, the season-end events are getting near, putting the pressure on for more perfect practice. I like to think that’s somewhere we come in. No matter the weather—Wyoming’s blowing snow, the Arizona heat, the East Coast’s monsoon rainswe’ve got your team roping fix. This issue is no exception. Our At the Barrier (page 14) section is loaded with the news you need about the sport you love, and Ropers (page 22) is like catching up with your buddies in line at the practice pen. Our Competitive Edge section (page…

Pendleton Round-Up record books needed updating after team roping records were matched and broken in the timed event slacks. Cody Snow and Wesley Thorp tied the existing arena record of 4.6 seconds to win the first round, matching David Key and Travis Woodard’s 2015 round-two time. Lane Ivy and Cesar de la Cruz were also 4.6 in the second round in 2019. Then came the record-shattering 4.2-second run from Erich Rogers and Paden Bray on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. “I knew when we went that we needed to be 5.5 or 5-flat to win something and give ourselves a chance at making the short round,” said 2017 World Champion Header Rogers, who rode 15-year-old Hot Shot. (Rogers and Bray were 6-flat plus 5 in round one.) “That steer was pretty…

Q: I understand you come from a long line of cowboys. A: I’m a fifth-generation rancher. It’s in my blood, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s what we do. Q: What are your earliest memories of life on the ranch, and what was your childhood like? A: We didn’t have ranch hands. So when I was a kid, I did school work in the heat of the day and otherwise worked with my dad. My life has a lot of different chapters, and I’m kind of like a jack of all trades. We might go catch a cow, then wean and process yearlings, then I’m off to a barrel race. I have an outside horse right now that’s a mustang, so I might breakaway a jersey after…

When you’re wanting to throw fast, everyone is so concerned with getting higher on the cow and riding to the end of it, but that’s the biggest misconception about heeling. Riding farther back to maintain forward motion through the corner is the best way to ensure a fast shot and leave yourself the option of a high-percentage shot a few jumps later, too. LESSONS LEARNED My whole career I was worried about the steer getting away from me. But I’ve learned that no matter what, I’m really only one swing away from a good spot at all times. Guys will start to go to amateur rodeos or running at a fast time, and they’ll ride super hard and get all the way around the cow, but that’s not it. You…

For lifelong heelers, swapping ends requires developing a feel that doesn’t always come natural at the sport’s elite level. I only switched to heading six or seven years ago, after roping calves and heeling my whole life. There were some adjustments in feel that I didn’t realize I’d need to make, and those adjustments have made a huge difference this year. It took me a long time to get the feel of setting steers up. I knew what I wanted, but it was just a matter of doing it—especially in high-pressure situations when I had to be fast. This problem and my lack of feel affected the way I was handling steers at the Finals when I went in 2018. I felt like I roped good enough, but I wasn’t…

JIMMY, TWINKIE AND CLINT Key Bloodlines: SON OF OAK Chad Masters took home the $5,000 bonus for the AQHA/PRCA Horse of the Year title in 2017 with his 2006 gelding, Madison Oak, the fast sorrel horse he calls Clint. Masters won Cheyenne in 2019 with Joseph Harrison on Clint, and he’s excelled in setups big and small during rodeo’s regular season. “There’s a good friend of ours named Clint Madison that lives in Kentucky now but he’s from Mississippi,” Masters said. “He and his family raise these horses, and I bought mine when he was 4. Then, I bought another one from him a couple years later that was a full brother to him when he was 4.” That second sibling, Twinkie, is a full brother to Clint and, while…

I get a lot of people complimenting me on my swing. I’m able to rope calves no matter where they are—if they are out in front of me, up close, left or right. I feel like I’m able to get a lot of coverage. If you try and point it at the calf on the first swing, then you have to try and get power on the second swing and you’re trying to throw on the third swing. You have to have the power already on the second swing so that you can aim it at your target. I feel like pointing your first swing at the calf could be a mistake, but a lot of girls have perfected it. I don’t necessarily try and point my first swing at…

New for the 2022 roping season, the Key Card Max offers team ropers an unmatched benefits package. Not only does this new level of membership pay dividends to ropers who place throughout the year by doubling WSTR accumulated earnings, Key Card Max ropers will also gain access to three other programs that are specific to the competitive team roper: Roping.com, USRoper, and Time-Tracker Run Delivery. USRoper is an emergency roadside response service dedicated to team ropers, their families and their horses. Key Card Max holders will receive a yearly subscription to USRoper along with all of their benefits. “We partnered with the WSTR and USTRC for the 2022 season because we realized an ever-increasing need for fast and tailored response for ropers and their families who experience breakdowns on the…

2021–2022 USTRC CINCH Ladies Points Award At Home Challenge Events: 10 points will be awarded to the winner; no other points will be awarded. Signature Events: Points will be awarded to those winning an aggregate check. First place = 10 points, second = 9 points, and so on. Signature Events will only award points to the number of places paid. Cinch NFTR: Points are doubled. First = 20, second = 18, and so on, as far down as the ropings are paid. The top points earners after the last run of the Cinch NFTR on May 1, 2022, will be crowned our Cinch Ladies Heading and Heeling Champions, each receiving a bonus check of $1,000 and one-year’s worth of Cinch clothing. NOTABLE HEADERS Walsenburg, Colorado’s Tess Menegatti entered the USTRC…

Question: Trevor, I grew up around team roping. I learned most of the basics from my grandpa and my dad, but they wouldn’t ever let me get serious about it for fear of being injured and jeopardizing a baseball career. I’m 31 now and have a strong pull to get back to my roots and start team roping. Comparing roping to golf: I played golf for years and never got any better. Finally took lessons, and I improved dramatically. I don’t want to make the same mistake with roping, so my question is: Should I seek instruction or experience first? And if instruction is the answer, where? Thanks! Clint McNeal That’s an easy one. Definitely seek instruction first. If you learn and learn the wrong way, then you have to…

“I have to go,” Donnie Woodmansee said, calmly, but also abrubtly, about 20 minutes into a conversation. Woodmansee, 45, is a firefighter at Denver, Colorado’s South Metro station. In the background, noise over a loudspeaker indicates that the unit has been called to respond to an emergency. Woodmansee, indeed, has to go. A career firefighter for 21 years, Woodmansee was turned onto the pursuit when he served in Bosnia in 1999 and 2000 with the National Guard, in the wake of the most violent war Europe had experienced since the end of World War II. There, a supervisor planted the seed that he’d be a good fit. His 16-year career with the Guard would also place Woodmansee in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention performing humanitarian aid response to hurricanes…

Shelby Boisjoli led the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association’s Breakaway Roping World Standings for the bulk of the 2021 season—making her a perfect fit for the last issue of The Breakaway Roping Journal in 2021. Boisjoli, originally from Canada but now a resident of Stephenville, Texas, leads the pack heading into the National Finals of Breakaway Roping with $52,485.90 in season earnings over 68 rodeos. In 2020, Boisjoli finished eighth in the WPRA Breakaway Roping World Standings with $21,555.85. “I was pretty excited to accomplish both of my goals for season leader and my goal for the season was $50,000, so I was happy that I accomplished both of those short-term goals,” Boisjoli said. Notably, Boisjoli won the ProRodeo Tour Finale in Salinas to close out the season, worth $8,786. But…

The wild and jam-packed-with-fans Monday Night Football kickoff game Sept. 13 in Las Vegas brought Sin City back into people’s periphery, while reminding the WPRA’s best breakaway ropers that they still didn’t know if they’d have a culminating PRCA event in Vegas as the regular season wrapped. Fortunately, the PRCA and WPRA’s National Finals of Breakaway Roping, following up the inaugural event held last December in Arlington, Texas, was set, at press time, to feature 10 rounds and an average, likely over two days at The Orleans, with at least the same $200,000 purse offered last year. “We’re excited to have a Finals,” said Jordan Fabrizio, who throat-latched all 12 of her calves at last year’s NFBR. “Our end goal is for our Finals to be consistent with the men’s…

USING YOUR LEFT HAND IN A STOP I’m not a heeler—I have trained heel horses, but I’m not a heeler by any means. I study what I think the guys who are great do, and what their horses do that help and hurt them. The guys who have a really sharp, shocky left hand, it pops the horse as they’re going to throw. Their horses are a little more front endy. Joseph Harrison, when he throws, his left hand goes with his right hand. He ropes and then he picks it back up, and his horses stop with their front ends up and their back ends down. Your horse will learn to stop off the timing of your run and you sitting down in your saddle, so using your left…

We all got used to seeing Billie Jack Saebens and a little black horse by the name of Domino Lena—aka Kevin—get it done. Kevin’s the Dixon Flowers Rope Horse weapon who got Saebens over the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo hump, and who Billie Jack rode when he heeled behind Coleman Proctor at the 2016-17 NFRs. Kevin’s gone missing for injury timeouts multiple times. So it was a welcome sight for Saebens fans to see Billie Jack and Kevin, who’s 16 now, doing work up in the Northwest this fall. The two of them taking the victory lap together after their big win with Jake Clay at the Ellensburg (Washington) Rodeo took the cake. “I think Kevin’s had three comebacks,” said Missouri native Billie Jack, who now lives in Nowata, Oklahoma,…

When he backs into the heading box at next month’s 2021 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Clint Summers will join some very rare rodeo company. The NFR Switchenders Club is so exclusive that before this year only seven cowboys—Bret Beach, Trevor Brazile, David Motes, Walt Rodman, Mark Simon, Speed Williams and J.D. Yates, in alphabetical order—have ever accomplished the feat in the history of Rodeo’s Super Bowl. Quinn Kesler will also head in Vegas, which brings this party’s total to nine. “I’m overly excited, I really am,” said Summers, 30, who calls Lake City, Florida home, and also has a place in Stephen-ville, Texas. “I heeled forever, and maybe it’s just part of being a heeler—every heeler thinks he can head.” Summers heeled for 2017 World Champion Header Erich Rogers at…

In the last two issues of The Breakaway Roping Journal, we discussed the breakaway roper’s grip in relation to control of the swing, as well as the elements of a successful swing in breakaway roping. If you missed either of those articles, you can find them in the “Roping Tips” section of breakawayropingjournal.com, and you can watch videos demonstrating each on breakawayroping.com. In this issue, I want to talk about the delivery—which, believe it or not, is actually the least complicated of these three elements. THE CONCEPT The delivery is a continuation of the swing. It’s so common in breakaway roping to see ropers deliver from the bottom of their swing. When you deliver from the bottom of the swing, your butt is out, your shoulders are forward and your…

“I think the setups have made these guys go faster because you’re not really penalized for messing up sometimes. You’re actually rewarded for it. With these young guys, that’s what you see and that’s what you do. Just like anything, over time, everybody gets faster. If you watch roping, when I came in in the late 90s, it changes every 10 years or so. It’s going to probably keep getting faster.” —Clay Tryan, on “The Score” in season 4, available to stream or download wherever you listen to podcasts.…