Kayelen Helton and Annette Stahl, who rope as third partners, won The Cowgirl Gathering’s inaugural All-Girl Open Team Roping at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, from second callback with a time of 27.54 seconds on four head, worth $6,560 for their team.
“It was such a tough roping—possibly the toughest all-girl roping that I’ve ever roped in,” Helton said. “I’m thankful for the producers that made it happen during this tough year.”
They roped their short-round steer in 6.97 seconds to move into the lead with one team left to go—Jackie Crawford and Annette Stahl.
“I just didn’t try to change anything that I’ve done throughout the whole roping,” Helton said. “I went at him aggressive and just tried to really pick him up and handle him good to make Annette’s job easy. It’s a smaller arena and it’s kind of tough to make things easy in here, but we got by it.”
Helton headed on a 16-year-old strong, bay head horse she calls Moe to get her job done in the short setup.
“I was kind of worried about it this morning,” Helton noted about the Cowtown Coliseum. “It’s so small and my head horse that I rode today is pretty big. I just knew that he could pull up the wall, which is the main thing in here. You can get it on them really fast. I just really tried to make sure that my horse was strong to keep those steers pulling for my heelers.
Stahl got the clock stopped on a new bay heel horse named Baywatch,9, that she added to her string about a month prior to this event.
“We’re just starting to get together,” Stahl said. “He runs, reads cattle and stops.”
After heeling down the fourth steer for Helton, Stahl rode back into the box to heel for 19-time World Champion Jackie Crawford.
Stahl ended up with an empty loop when the run was over, which resulted in a no-time for their team, but she’s roped enough to know that it’s just part of team roping.
“You learn from the misses,” Stahl said. “I’m going to start the next roping on a clean slate. I just try to approach every steer as doing my job. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past. I can’t change that. I look at every steer as a new steer and I have to do my job. I didn’t do my job as well as I should have on that steer. If you never miss, then you’re not team roping.”TRJ
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Full Results:
1. Kayelen Helton and Annette Stahl, 27.54 seconds on four head, worth $6,560
2. Lari Dee Guy and Jimmi Jo Montera, 28.05 seconds on four head, worth $3,860
3. Kayelen Helton and Lorraine Moreno, 34.30 seconds on four head, worth $2,500 a man
Round 1 Fast Time:
1. Jackie Crawford and Annette Stahl, 6.47-second run, worth $600
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