Garrett Tonozzi barely left the Mountain States Circuit this year, and he will end the regular season roping for $166,667 a side at the Cinch Playoffs Governor’s Cup in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sept. 25–27—heading for a partner who needs the money to make the National Finals Rodeo.
Tonozzi, 41, and Trey Yates got into the Cinch Playoff Series stop in Puyallup, Washington, on the NFR Open exemption—they were reserve champions in Colorado Springs in July after winning the Mountain States Circuit Finals last October, and the champions’ spot rolled down when Jake Smith and Nicky Northcott turned out to be already qualified on points. At the Aug. 24 cutoff, Yates was No. 24 in Playoff Series heeling points, one out of the field. Tonozzi was not inside the top 23 headers. Without the exemption, neither man ropes in Washington, and Yates does not have Sioux Falls on his calendar.
“It all started in the circuit finals,” Yates said. “I think I had the circuit won, but for him to get to the NFR Open, it was going to rely on us winning the average. We had a really good circuit finals, ended up winning the average and got to rope at the NFR Open and [were] reserve champs there, and that got us a spot to Puyallup.”
Yates goes to Sioux Falls as the No. 9 heeler in the world with $123,489—$11 shy of the $123,500 TRJ projects will be the final heeling cut, and $8,916 clear of No. 15. He and Tonozzi earned their Governor’s Cup berth by finishing fourth in the Puyallup final, and he has added a Fort Madison win with Riley Kittle, fifth in Pendleton’s first round, third at Othello and a share of 15th at Mandan since. Only four heelers below him—Douglas Rich, JC Flake, Jake Long and Denton Dunning—could pass him with a single check, and for Yates to fall out of the top 15, seven men would have to go by him while he won nothing. With $166,667 a side on the line in Sioux Falls and the Last Hurrah in Stephenville still to come, one more check of any size effectively settles it.
Tonozzi said he felt that part of it.
“No, there was some pressure there in Puyallup to make the final four,” Tonozzi said. “I want to see Trey make it. I’ve known him since he was a little kid and we’ve been friends forever, so just getting to help him make the Finals was a big part of it. So yeah, there was some added pressure on that side of it.”
The two are Colorado natives—Tonozzi raised in Fruita, Yates in Pueblo—and Yates, about a decade younger, grew up with Tonozzi as the header to watch.
“To end up in the top four with a chance to go to Sioux Falls was pretty exciting,” Yates said. “I mean, I grew up watching him at the Doug Kaess Memorial. It was one of the few open ropings I got to go to as a kid and watch.”
“The first year I went to the George Strait is when he won first and second,” Yates said.
Tonozzi won the 2013 George Strait Team Roping Classic with Dugan Kelly and finished second at the same roping with York Gill, worth $186,000 and the famed GSTRC truck and trailer.
“Being from Colorado, him being from Colorado, always looked up to him, watched him head amazing at the NFR,” Yates said. “I was a kid.”
One borrowed horse
Tonozzi did not haul to Puyallup. He flew to Washington and got on a horse belonging to Riley Kittle—Yates’ regular header since June, who was won Fort Madison, Iowa, with Yates the same weekend.
“I flew up there and Riley Kittle let me ride his horse,” Tonozzi said. “That was the first rodeo I ever rode him.”
Yates said the two of them laughed about it.
“We roped there, and it was just, I don’t know, it’s kind of fun,” Yates said. “Garrett rodeoed hard, but only in the Mountain States Circuit, and it’s just kind of funny—he flew there, borrowed Riley Kittle’s horse, and we were laughing, because I think it’d been, maybe he said eight or 10 years since he was there.”
They were unplaced in both rounds of Set 2 but third on two head at 14.4 seconds. Sunday’s eight-team semifinal went off in the rain.
“It was just one of those deals,” Tonozzi said. “It was so muddy and still kind of raining and Dustin and JC had went out right in front of us and it was just like, man, put a clean time on the board and see how it falls. It was just not the most ideal conditions. We had a really good steer, just went and made a decent run and ended up winning the eight-man. So got to the final four, which was probably the biggest goal for me and Trey, I believe, is just make sure we get into Sioux Falls and go from there.”
Their 5.3 won the semifinal, a tenth ahead of world standings leaders Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira. They took a no-time in the four-team final, which paid fourth: $3,850 a man and the ticket to Sioux Falls.
“The second-biggest stage”
Tonozzi is a two-time NFR header—2006 with Brady Minor, 2008 with Kinney Harrell—and served as the PRCA’s team roping event representative beginning in 2010. The nephew of nine-time NFR heeler Bret Tonozzi, he no longer rodeos full time; he and his wife, world champion barrel racer Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi, live in Lampasas, Texas, and run Conquer Equine, a rehabilitation facility. This summer he headed for Cullen Teller and left the circuit for Driggs, Idaho, and Billings, Montana, and little else.
Yates went to Sioux Falls last year ranked 15th, won the first round with Luke Brown for nearly $12,000 a man and made his fourth NFR. For Tonozzi, it is his first Governor’s Cup, and this time he is hauling.
“I’m going to drive up there and ride my own horse,” Tonozzi said. “Trey’s going to have the old buckskin there just in case. And if I want to ride him, I’ll have the opportunity to ride him as well.”
YY is J.D. Yates’ buckskin, the horse Tonozzi tried in Colorado before Puyallup.
Yates said the partnership is not a one-off—Tonozzi helps him enter, and the two practice together when Yates is home in the summer.
“He’s a lot of help for me too, while I’m rodeoing, as far as entering, and I go practice with him when I’m home—at least once a week if I’m home in the summer, drive up there and rope with him or he’s come down,” Yates said. “He’s been a big part of my, I would say more so the last two or three years, an influence in my rodeo career, so to get to rope with him at, I would call it, the second-biggest stage of rodeo now is pretty exciting.”
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