Only the BestThe best part about roping for me is that I get to do it with my family. That we always do it together is something I enjoy. My whole family ropes and rides. My mom runs barrels and, Kinsey, my little sister does, also—she’s 9. She just started roping not that long ...read more
Who taught you to rope, and how long have you been roping?My dad taught me how to rope and I would not be where I am today if not for him. There have also been several individuals who have had an influence on my team roping skills, the one that has been the most influential is ...read more
Too Much Roping?Maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago I just decided to start refocusing on my team roping. I've team roped my whole life, but it just kind of blended in with breakaway and a bunch of other things, and now with life and job and all the other things my ...read more
Who are your Junior NFR partners?Calvin Taylor, Luke Williams, and Trent Wood. What horses are in your string?I’m riding a horse I call Taz—he’s 7—and one named Laser—he’s 10. I ride a palomino—Hollywood—a little bit too. But Tax is my favorite. He rides around there, drags his ...read more
TRJ: You and Paul (Eaves) have been so dominant up to this point. How are you feeling heading into summer?CS: This is the most we’ve ever had won. I’ve been on both ends of it, but it really takes the pressure off of a guy. But I guess if you think about it, there’s really never ...read more
Weeks BeforeThe first two times I won the BFI, in 2005 and 2008, I would have been in Montana before going to Reno. There, I wouldn’t have been able to jackpot as much, so I would have been in the practice pen, really focusing on making sure my horse scored, letting the steers ...read more
Number and End4-Elite HeelerAll-Girl PowerI usually just meet up with my partner, Jayme Marcrum, at the ropings. We’ve known each other for a long time, probably since ’85 or ’86. I used to head and she used to heel back then. I quit for a while after I had my kids, and then I ...read more
Kendra Santos: When did you start team roping, and how did that happen?Jason Smith: I was raised by a single mom, Linda Smith, and my Grandma Carolyn lived across the street. My grandmother worked the concession stand on Sundays at an arena in Dallas they called the Hog Pen. My ...read more
LANCE ALLEN WAS warming up his hands after just bringing in a new set of steers from the frozen pens outside for the #9 World Series of Team Roping qualifier at The Ranch in Loveland, Colorado. He was walking through the Ranchway Feeds Arena toward the announcer stand when he ...read more
#10 teams will compete on the biggest stage in rodeo at AT&T Stadium, alongside PRCA cowboys and qualifiers at RFD-TV's The American in 2019, Denny Gentry and Randy Bernard announced May 29.TRJ: How did this partnership between the World Series of Team Roping and The American ...read more
When it comes to team roping accomplishments, it’s often a matter of who won what for how much in what time, and have they done it more than once. Within those parameters, there’s certainly no shortage of legendary feats such as the historic eight consecutive world champion ...read more
Gist Silversmiths has made the BFI buckles for nearly all of the storied roping’s 41-year history, but the BFI Champion buckle on Cody Cowden’s belt is one-of-a-kind. Cowden won the 1997 Bob Feist Invitational with a time of 47.72 seconds on six head with his Wrangler National ...read more
Dr. David Fletcher kicked off February by winning the Wildfire XX #11 Businessman’s Super Qualifier with his partner, header Alan Chappell. In an event that paid out more than $231,000 and drew 420 teams, Chappell and Fletcher took the winning check for $43,000 after securing the ...read more
Looking AheadThis year I just want to rope good; to rope to my potential, and try not to let my head get to me. I don’t have one particular goal in mind, other than to do my best at every roping. Then I’ll be okay. I’m just trying to get over last year. It was a hard year. I’m ...read more
In Denver, each new year kicks off with the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo, a Colorado tradition since 1906. It’s a tradition that team roper Dr. Jason Stoneback has taken part in since he began working with the Justin Sports Medicine Team in 2011. Getting to work behind ...read more
Horse trainer Casey Hicks’ winning weekend started off after he heeled four steers behind Dick Yates in a time of 33.12 to earn $4,300. He then went on to dominate in the #12 where he roped with Jimmy Suggs to take home first in the average with a 30.46 on four head worth $19,260 ...read more
There’s really nothing like the creek of the swing of the back gate of an old steel stock trailer as it bangs against the pipe alley it’s backed up to, followed by a few whoops and hollers, and then the clambering of hooved feet as they jump off the trailer into their new ...read more
Team roper Jeff Busby, 55, of Brock, Texas, spent his early years chopping weeds in cotton fields for $1 an hour. As an engineer in his garage some years later, he began what would become Av-DEC, a company that specializes in anti-corrosion aviation technologies and caters to the ...read more
Q: What does it mean to you to end the year in the #1 spot?A: It means quite a bit, even though it wasn’t anything like battling out to the last round. I had a big enough lead that I kind of had it sewn up before I even got there. The gap was big, but it’s still awesome. I ended ...read more
Jaxson Tucker, 16, dominated both the Open and #15 at the South Georgia Classic in Perry, Georgia, December 29, 2017. In the Open, Tucker headed for partner Ty Ethridge to turn in a time of 32.74-seconds on four head worth a total of $3,030. Not long after, Tucker roped in the ...read more
$362,000. The largest paycheck at the 2017 World Series of Team Roping Finale. And Erick Alvarado won it on his fancy, hard-stopping, home-bred, leopard Appaloosa named Stud Muffin, and Will Jones rode his double-bred Hancock head horse named Spook, who bucked until he was 6. ...read more
Arizona’s Joel Wengert has never missed a World Series of Team Roping Finale. He’s a legacy member, but he’s never had much luck at the Finale. Until 2017.Wengert, a horseshoer and owner of Wengert Land and Cattle, heeled four steers in 31.80 seconds behind fellow Arizonan and ...read more
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Utah’s Randy Brooks has been coming to the World Series of Team Roping Finale since its inaugural year in 2006. Any contestant who roped in the first Finale is considered a Legacy Roper and is atomically qualified each year. Brooks has roped in all 12 WSTR Finales despite a major ...read more
Colorado’s Scott Smith and Nebraska’s Garrett Nokes have roped a lot of steers together. In the last 35 years, they’ve amateur rodeoed and jackpotted across the High Plains, when Nokes wasn’t busy bull dogging in the PRCA. But no steer was ever as sweet as the one they roped ...read more
Abilene’s Randy Lewis, DVM, is back in Las Vegas for the World Series of Team Roping Finale XII, after recently completing construction on a clinic he built partly with winnings from a successful 2015 Finale. “I just built a brand new equine clinic that actually a good portion of ...read more
Standing beside his horse next to the stripping chute, header Daren Sims took off his straw hat and stared at the ground, shifting his weight back and forth. His heeler, Spunk Sasser, stood on a Priefert panel and watched out over the arena as 16 teams tried to out rope their ...read more
Tyler Bach has watched his dad Allen win more than most kids ever will–but no gold buckle or major jackpot win has ever compared the two feet he saw his dad rope December 10. Looking at his dad from aboard his facing head horse, Tyler watched as they came tight on the short round ...read more
This summer, when Bobby Mote found himself in his second career as a horse trainer at Reliance Ranches, 7-year-old PKC Corona Cuz, or "Cuz", was just about ready to start his second career as a rope horse. The 15.2-hand brown horse, by PYC Paint Your Wagon out of a Special Effort ...read more
In 2010, a 21-year-old Georgia reacher named Kaleb Driggers was on top of the world. He was in his second year in ProRodeo competition, and he was heading for seven-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo heeler Brad Culpepper. That same year, a 30-year-old header from Powell Butte, ...read more
Amo il team roping! Ich liebe team roping! I love team roping! Congratulations. You’ve just completed your first course in talking team roping in three different languages, and chances are good that out of those first 16 words, you already understand eight. You’re halfway there, ...read more
At the Journal, we’ve attempted to corral all of the fuss on these pages. That’s an impossibility, but we’re hoping this package is an entertaining and resourceful glance at snowbird paradise, whether you’ve already nabbed a second home in the Valley of the Sun or are taking your ...read more
W.T. Ridings was going to school at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater when he got a letter May 20, 1958, from then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, telling him his service was needed in a conflict on the Korean Peninsula, some 6,614 miles away. "I had never even thought ...read more
Doug Rich began college with a rodeo scholarship to Western Oklahoma State College after taking the all-around, tie-down and team roping titles at the 2013 Illinois High School Rodeo Association State Finals. Rich is in his final semester at University of Tennessee at Martin, ...read more
It would be understandable for a couple of brothers, busy starting families and running the companies they founded, to let their team-roping hobby slide. After all, who has time while scouting projects, managing businesses, and building custom homes to work the arena, saddle the ...read more
Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira won the United States Team Roping Championships Cinch Jeans National Finals of Team Roping Open and $53,400 by roping five steers in 32.05 seconds, including a 5.54-second short round run. Nogueira won $50,000 earlier in the day with partner ...read more
Texas' Cooper Hatley and Brazil's Junior Nogueira roped four steers in 27.2 seconds to win $50,000 at the #15 Shoot-Out at the United States Team Roping Championship's Cinch National Finals of Team Roping. Hatley also placed fourth with Louisiana's Jonathan Torres with a time of ...read more
Number and End I’m a 5 heeler. Louisiana Ropings We can go to a roping every weekend. We don’t have the little jackpot ropings during the week. When you get east of the Mississippi, you’re dealing with the blue collar people that work eight to 10 hours a day, Monday through ...read more
Colorado’s Jessica Amicarella and Hawaii’s Riley Pedro took home the number-one spot in the #13 at the World Series in Gill, Colo. Their team turned in a time of 36.96-seconds on four head to split $3,069. “The steers were strong—our first two steers were really strong,” Pedro ...read more
Ree Dees and Joe Mike Clem teamed up for the #12 World Series of Team Roping qualifier produced by Mathews Land & Cattle in Las Cruces, New Mexico, last month, turning in a time of 33.5 seconds on four head to take home $7,490 and a trip to the WSTR Finale. Dees works for Joe ...read more
Originally from New Jersey’s farm country, Bob graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in animal sciences before taking a livestock management job on an Angus ranch in Montana. Colorado called to him next, where he wrangled a dude string for Sombrero Ranches’ Rex ...read more
Kaitlin Gustave: You won the #10 Gold Plus and the #13 at the Southern Colorado Classic. Tell me a little about your weekend.Anna Gregory: I had a good weekend—I had a good weekend because I won the #13, I won fourth in the #11 and I won the #10 Gold Plus. We were 43.28 on four ...read more
Kayelen Helton began turning heads in the arena more than a decade ago when she won back-to-back Texas High School Rodeo Association breakaway championships. She’s since set herself apart as one of the top female headers in the jackpot ranks. Helton, who attended Stephenville, ...read more
Oklahoma's Brandon Abney and Scott Keller took home the number-one spot in the #9 at the USTRC's Chisholm Trail Classic in Enid, Okla. Their team took home a total of $6,950 plus 6,000 in flex earnings after turning in an accumulative time of 41.32 seconds on four head."You can't ...read more
What was the secret to your hot streak? I entered with a bunch of good heelers. How do you know you partners? I’ve roped with Derrick at goat ropings and jackpots, and I won the #13 with my dad. We used to rope together a lot when I was younger, and we went on a dry spell for ...read more
Number and end: 4+ header Association of preference:World Series of Team Roping by far, all though NTR is good as well. I have never been to a USTRC or ACTRA roping, so I wouldn’t know about those; however, the money and the opportunity is so great at the World Series ropings. ...read more
Jackie Crawford and Annette Stahl are no strangers to the roping industry and the winners' circle. But both ladies have failed to win one major all-girl bucket-list roping–until today. The legendary duo roped four-head in 33.69 seconds, each pocketing $20,500 at the Charlie 1 ...read more
I started my career roping with Bret Boatright, Dee Pickett, Tee Woolman and Mark Simon, so I learned a lot about entering and traveling right off the bat. Since then, I’ve pretty much always done the entering for my partner and me and our buddy team. I don’t even write any of it ...read more
Doctors were able to save Rhen Richard's thumb after he cut it off at Cole Davison's place in Stephenville, Texas, this Feb. 3, and he's back with a vengeance for the summer run. We caught up with Richard who hit the road with Rich Skelton in Canada this weekend. Richard and ...read more
Kaitlin Gustave: The Windy Ryon is a prestigious breakaway roping, what are your thoughts about this roping?Maddy Goforth: For an event to go on for 44 years and continue to grow is something in itself. It’s an honor to get to compete against some of the best girls in the ...read more
Braving upI thought about rodeoing for a few years, but I never had the courage really to do it. I never really stepped up. I’ve always had nice horses because Kenny is amazing at making them and finding them. But with this horse, Felina, and how we get along, I finally said yes, ...read more
