September 2008 Issue

Admittedly, this has been one of the toughest years of my career. Allen and I haven’t roped very well and we’ve drawn even worse. There’s been more than once where we’ve been just out of the money on our first steer and then drawn a steer on our second run that was difficult to place on. Let’s not forget the high team broken barrier at the BFI. As hard as I’ve worked and practiced over the last year and a half, it’s mentally devastating to be unsuccessful day in and day out.

At Cheyenne we made two good runs, but both steers were strong, ran left and we were two seconds shy of making the short round. After Cheyenne I went home to recharge and see my family for a few days.

When I was growing up my dad always had a lot of kids in the arena and it made roping and riding a lot of fun for me. So, learning from my father, I do everything possible to make riding and being in the arena fun for my kids. Our babysitter has several kids close to Hali’s age and they all come over and ride and rope when I’m home. I’ll never make my kids rope, but if they’re having fun, it makes me happy for us all to be together. So everyone would be in the arena about 5:00 a.m. to escape the heat. The kids each have specific steers they run and we really have a ball. We break about 9:00 a.m. and during the afternoon we’d swim, eat watermelon and then take a nap. Our practice would start back up about 7:00 p.m. and we’d rope for a couple more hours. The kids have so much fun and when it’s time for me to leave again, it’s one of the hardest things I do. You just have to put your head down and move forward. At 12th place in the world standings I didn’t have the luxury of staying home and had to get back on the road.

On a lighter note, we’ve won $17,000 in the last couple of weeks and now have the finals made. It’s a huge relief because I was really dreading going to the one-headers in September and battling it out to make the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

The next forty-five days should be interesting to see who makes the finals. There are a lot of guys who rope well and are not in the top fifteen. Normally there are two or three not in the top fifteen who deserve to be and this year there’s a dozen or so.

Team roping at the professional rodeos is tougher now than it’s ever been. Many rodeos have dropped the short round, making it a two-header. This was done to help the cowboys not have to travel as much. Consequently, it’s turned the two-headers into a gun-slinging match where you have to draw in the top 20 to 30 percent of the herd and then go make a good run.

Previously you could go to a three-header, make three nice runs and usually place. The two-head format causes you to run at the day money every time. The game has changed from making clean conservative runs to wide open. Rodeos this year have been exceptionally tough and often so close that two-tenths of a second separates first place from “no money.”

This NFR will definitely be interesting because most of the teams that make it can be very fast. They will be guys that go wide open and headers that can reach. It should make great watching and I’m just glad I’m going to be there.

There’s a project I’ve been working on for the last few months that I’m pretty excited about. It’s a new format designed so that people can rope at events close to home, without spending a fortune on fuel, and still have a chance to qualify for a finals with large paychecks. I’ll have more details next month.

For more information about Speed, including roping tips and video clips, visit www.speedzoneroping.com.

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