Dear Roper,
With this issue, we enter our 10th year as The Team Roping Journal.
That’s almost impossible to believe. The little pamphlet called Spin To Win that Tom Winsor, Kendra Santos and Jake Barnes started back in 1997 has turned into the engine that drives the Western sports industry, providing the most complete coverage of the richest recreational sport in the world.
That first issue—September 2017—had Derrick Begay on the cover, in a photo I’d taken years earlier at a Spin To Win photo shoot. Begay has long been one of our favorites (and everyone else’s, too) for his willingness to do whatever shenanigans we suggest.
Lucky for all of us, Begay hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still out on the road, just rodeoin’ a little with Colter Todd. In Cheyenne this year, he said he was “as close to the top as he’s been all year” when he was sitting alongside Korbin Rice and Cooper Freeman, our current coverboys who (as of press time) led the world standings. To commemorate the moment, Calli Montague, our digital editor extraordinaire, snapped the above that you see of the three men. They’re also out here “just rodeoin’” like Begay and Todd, and the fun they’re having is evident in their wins, like the $50,000-per-man Rocky Mountain Cup title they banked in July that all but locked in their first NFR qualification.
The whole having-fun-while-you’re-doing-it thing seems to make rodeoing a little bit more fruitful for a lot of these guys, and on page 74 you can read Calli’s story about who these newcomers really are and what it took for them to become seemingly overnight successes.
And speaking of Begay—you can find Kendra Santos’ story on the roping clinic he and his pals from the Navajo Nation put on alongside the Window Rock, Arizona ProRodeo. There’s something special about a crew of NFR qualifiers and world champs pulling together to help kids chase their dreams.
This issue is jam-packed with everything team roping, so dig in.
See you at the Riata,
