Jake Stanley buys cattle for a living now, but most of the ranchers who sell to him didn’t learn his name at a sale barn. They learned it on the Pendleton grass in September 2006.
“People don’t know me because I’m the best cattle buyer in the world. They know me because I’ve rodeoed and what I’ve won,” Stanley said. “Most of them know it because of Pendleton, because most people pay attention to Pendleton up here. So it’s probably done as much for my outside career as it did for my rodeo career.”
That isn’t the payoff Stanley was counting on. He grew up in northeastern Oregon and had entered the Round-Up every year since he got his PRCA permit at 18. He’d already won RodeoHouston. He spent the summer of 2006 heading for Brady Minor, then picked up a young Russell Cardoza around August, after both of their teams split. Cardoza was a 19-year-old PRCA rookie from central California who had won the 2005 National High School Finals Rodeo team roping title with Blake Hirdes. Stanley was riding a 17-year-old horse he called Getner, after Rick Getner, who he bought him from.
Cardoza showed up to the Pendleton short round in the shirt he’d won the high school finals in. He wore it to every short go back then and Stanley gave him grief about it for years. It’s the shirt in the photo.
A Bad Draw and a Pendleton Buckle
They came back sixth or seventh high call and drew No. 44—Stanley’s own brand, and by Cardoza’s scouting, the worst steer in the herd. “Russell was good with numbers. I’m usually not,” Stanley remembered. “I walked up and I go, ‘What do we got?’ He goes, ‘We got 44.’ ‘Is that good?’ ‘No.’”
They were sitting mid-pack and needed money more than a buckle.
“We needed to win good there,” Stanley said, “not necessarily first.”
He hit the barrier as hard as he could and reached. They were 5.5, good enough to win the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Round. Then Joe Beaver and Nick Simmons knocked their steer down behind them.
“I asked Russell, ‘We win second?’” Stanley said. “He goes, ‘No, we’re tied.’ I go, ‘Beautiful.’”
Both teams were 20.1 on three head. Stanley and Cardoza left with $4,529 apiece. Beaver had already won the tie-down roping on his way to the all-around that same day, so Stanley and Cardoza took the team roping awards home and the Round-Up had a set remade for Beaver and Simmons.
Stanley figured the check locked him into his first National Finals. It didn’t, and he finished outside the top 15. He got to Las Vegas two years later with Walt Woodard and won a round of the 2008 NFR. By the NFR math, the week did more for the rookie on the other end of the rope. Cardoza went on to six NFRs, the 2016 Canadian heeling title and a second Pendleton buckle in 2012 with Colby Lovell. For Stanley, Pendleton 2006 was a near miss.
The Win That Stayed With Him
What it did instead was plant his name in the one place he meant to stay.
“If you live in California, you want to win Salinas,” Stanley said. “If you live up here, you want to win Pendleton.”
In 2006, the rest of the country learned the results when Sports News or Spin To Win came out. In Umatilla County, everybody already knew.
“Everybody you knew was out there at the short round that day,” Stanley said. “Hell, my banker’s sitting right there.”
Off the road, Stanley tried making head horses for a living and sold a few good ones, including one Jake Barnes bought.
“It’s good when you crack one off,” he said, “but if it’s your sole form of making a living…it’s tough.”
Today his biggest account is buying cattle for Beef Northwest’s feedlot, and he leases some places to run yearlings. The people he does business with are the same ones who were sitting in those stands.
“It probably didn’t sink in in ’06 how fortunate I was to get that knocked off the list,” Stanley said. “But it was huge.”
He knocked it off again in 2014 with Bucky Campbell, and he still hasn’t missed a Round-Up since he was 18. This September, it rained Thursday, and for the first time since high school, Stanley was scared on the hill. Campbell looked over and reminded him they both have kids.
“That’s usually not the game plan,” Stanley said. They went 6.5.
He’ll be back next September. So will a lot of the people who sell him calves, and they already know who he is.
—TRJ—