After being each other’s first run of the day—and a draw run at that—Tod Dillingham and Jay Mullens made it happen at the Cowtown Coliseum in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards to win the Imus Ranch Quarter Horses American Hero Celebration with Charly Crawford for $30,000.
There were 378 teams entered during the Nov. 8 #10.5 Slide at the NRS Arena in Decatur, Texas, from which U.S. Army veteran and header Dillingham and former deputy sheriff Mullens came out on top of the 15 teams that made it back to the Nov. 9 short round. They ended up with a 35.68-second time on four head to seal the deal.
Joshua, Texas, native Dillingham served eight years in the Army, from 2004 to 2012. He now works in logistics and supply chain for a carbon black manufacturer.
“It’s an amazing event,” Dillingham said of the weekend. “Bringing everybody together, getting to share stories and talk with your old comrades and just spending time with your friends and meeting new friends in the different branches of services, it just means a lot to us all.”
“The event really brings out and supports a multitude more than just the folks who get to go,” he continued. “Getting people out of their minds sometimes really brings a lot to ‘em. The amount of support for veterans that’s grown over the last decade has been tremendous. There was support all through the conflicts I was in, but it’s just growing tenfold in the last 10 years.”
Mullens started his law enforcement career in far West Texas—Midland, to be exact—where he worked as a deputy sheriff for three years before moving on to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where he worked for 26 and a half years before retiring.
“Words cannot express the gratitude for Charly for starting this,” Mullens, of Waxahachie, Texas, said. “The people behind Charly, the sponsorship, they’ve grown tremendously, even in the three years that I’ve been associated with it. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I told Charly, I said, thank you, now we have something to look forward to.”
On their final steer in the Cowtown Coliseum, the 9.87-second run was enough to capture the win, even when the steer stepped left and got in the wall in the short and sweet coliseum. Regardless, the team had ice in their veins.
“I was not even nervous at all,” Mullens, who was raised roping and ranching in Van Horn, Texas, said. “I just said my prayers and said, you’ve given me the opportunity to do this, I’ve done it a million times, just let me do it. I didn’t watch any of the runs, that’s one thing I do not do at ropings. If I’m high call back, I don’t want any of the runs until the very end.”
“It doesn’t really bother me, no one is shooting at me,” Dillingham said of the pressure of being high call back. “That steer took off pretty good and went over to the left; I tracked him over there and spun him and we were getting over to the wall, Jay was coming around, and I was able to pull him back off the wall and give Jay a good shot. I saw him with his one hand up in the air; I wasn’t tied on so I couldn’t copy him.”
Mullens got the drop of the flag with the help of “Canario,” or Peppy Poco Man, the 2003-model gelding who has been in the family for years.
“I’ve had him for 14 or 15 years that I know of,” he said of Canario, which is Spanish for ‘canary.’ “My brother, who lived in Odessa, had him before. We did some horse trading, and I ended up with him years ago.”
For Dillingham, whose daughters are lighting up the youth rodeo trail, this is one of the only ropings he gets to enter throughout the year—which he made count on a borrowed horse.
“Getting my family there on Sunday was great,” he said. “This is the one roping I go to a year that I don’t have to haul the girls around, but I missed my eldest daughter’s high school rodeo she had down in Saginaw, and then my youngest 5-year-old got her a little prize at one of the play day associations, so we both got things. She was tickled pink when we won.”
“He’s one we’re looking at for the girls as a breakaway horse,” Dillingham said of Festus, whom he had to jump on after an injury took his horse out of play. “We got him from some friends in the Texas Panhandle, and they let us borrow him for the last few weeks. Those steers were probably the fifth through ninth steers I’ve run on him.”
