One of team roping’s youngest diehards is the daughter of an American hero. Teenager Gauge Fleming of Dripping Springs, Texas, is tough enough to win at both ends despite battling chronic illnesses. And she’s an aspiring singer-songwriter who’s been in Nashville recording songs. In fact, her social posts about bullying, team roping and music have attracted 16,000 Instagram followers.

Dads don’t come any more tenacious than hers. Retired Army Capt. Chad Fleming, 53, served 22 years in special operations, mostly in the Middle East—and most of that after losing a leg from a combat injury. He’s proud of his little team roper.

“Gauge gets treated differently than the boys,” noted Fleming, who took his daughter to Charly and Jackie Crawford’s place for tune-ups. “She has to go out and prove herself. I’ve seen the look on the face of a cowboy at a jackpot who draws this 14-year-old girl. But then after two swings, she’s turning that steer and that dude’s not even ready! It’s like, ‘How ‘bout that, buddy?’”

A Family Built on Service

Chad’s wife (and Gauge’s mom), Treasure, is a Texas native who competed in rodeo growing up. She happened to be at the San Antonio Rodeo one night after Chad transferred from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio. He’d befriended a double-amputee Marine in a wheelchair who’d asked him for a ride to the rodeo that night. That Marine introduced Chad to Treasure.

Their daughter Gauge “eats, breathes and sleeps team roping,” according to Chad, who, with Treasure, also has a 16-year-old son, Gunner. Although Chad liked horses as a kid in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he was never around roping. Instead, service ran deep in his family tree.

“If you’ve ever seen Forrest Gump, I’m kind of like Lieutenant Dan,” said Fleming, who enlisted in 1998. “My grandfather was in World War II and my dad served in Vietnam.”

The Ambush That Changed Everything

One fall day in 2005 changed his life. Fleming and several others were awaiting an airplane to fly them home from a deployment when they were sent on one final mission to try to take out Iraq’s No. 2 leader. During an ambush, attackers on an overpass threw two grenades into Fleming’s vehicle, where they detonated. He escaped the vehicle but was shot in the leg during a nasty gunfight.

Doctors tried for about a year to save his leg, but after 23 surgeries, Fleming told a surgeon to just cut it off. After that, Fleming refused to medically retire—it became a personal challenge for him to make his way back into combat. That wasn’t because he hated what was in front of him, he said, but because he loved what was behind him—his fellow Americans, his family and his country.

“They finally let me go through a special operations selection course with able-bodied men,” he recounted. “I ended up outperforming 76% of them. They said, ‘I guess we can’t tell you no anymore.’”

So Fleming redeployed with his prosthetic leg six more times—and was shot twice more. Today, he owns three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars with Valor, an Army Commendation Medal with Valor and a Meritorious Service Medal. This is a man who also ran the New York City Marathon in 5 hours and 1 minute, with one leg.

Girl Dad, Roping Dad

After becoming a civilian in 2020, he found that other wounded veterans looked up to him. Today he has speaking gigs, where he shares insights on perseverance and resilience. He also founded a law enforcement technology company that holds 17 patents. He runs the veterans’ division of a mortgage company and is a partner at a Chevy dealership.

But most of all, he’s a girl dad. A roping dad. Every summer, he hooks onto the trailer and hauls his family to Colorado, where Gauge ropes three days a week. She isn’t into high school rodeo—only team roping jackpots.

“It’s probably not fair that I’m her dad, because I don’t have a very high threshold for mediocrity,” he pointed out. “That’s either a curse or a blessing for her.”

A few months ago, Gauge was at a roping when her horse bucked her off pretty hard.

“I thought she’d say she was done for the day,” Fleming said. “But she wanted to go finish the thing. She won first place and got the buckle! The folks putting the roping on were like, ‘Dang.’ She said, ‘You don’t know my dad.’”

Aside from what she puts into team roping, her dad thinks team roping puts a lot into her—and into all the kids who do it.

“I feel like team roping teaches life skills that you don’t even know you’re picking up until life’s problems come up and they’re easy to handle,” said Fleming, who played football and boxed in high school. “I mean, you’ve already figured out how to deal with good and bad partners and how to get your horse working or get a new one. I can’t say enough good things about the sport and what it teaches you.”

—TRJ—