The stage was set when Brye Crites and Tyler Worley rolled into the California spring run, which these past two weeks featured old-school four-head averages back-to-back in Red Bluff and Clovis. Their welcomed win at the 111th Clovis Rodeo was no surprise considering the fact that their four-legged A-Team was meant for center stage running down four 550-pound muleys with the score intentionally set out there to make it interesting, and a heeling barrier added for an extra element of intrigue. The Clovis W was worth $9,170 a man to Oklahoma’s Crites and Arkansas cowboy Worley, and made the miles on the monster 18-hour drive to the next one in Guymon, Oklahoma much more tolerable.
“A win does shorten the drive down,” grinned Crites, 31, of Welch, Oklahoma. “It’s been a long winter, being hurt and roping like crap. It feels good to get something won. We needed the points.”
Crites, who actually heeled for Jake Orman at the 2022 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, broke his left ankle on January 27 when a head horse fell with him at home. He had to doctor’s release Fort Worth (Worley roped with Jaxson Tucker), then roped at San Antonio in a cast against doctor’s orders. There, they beat the handicappers’ odds to win the first round in their bracket with a 4.6-second run. Crites got his cast off right before Houston, and is just now getting back into his old boot after having to wear a bigger one on the left side since the fall.
“I couldn’t hold my stirrup open with a broken ankle, so I’d get on my horse, then we took hay twine and tied the outside of my stirrup to the back cinch, and the inside of my stirrup to the front cinch. I couldn’t move my foot at all. I had nothing. I couldn’t kick or stand up. I was riding the same horse I rode here at Clovis, and luckily, he’s crazy free.”
Wrangler Dashin Free—he calls the black blaster Deuce—is 14 and fast.
“I bought this horse from Shayla Hall (Brenten’s wife),” Crites said. “They bought him off the track when he was young, and Brenten hated him. He sent him and another horse to Courtney (Brye’s wife, who’s the sister of NFR header Zac Small) to sell. It was right when I was started to head, and I rode both horses to make videos to sell them, then ended up buying them both.
“Deuce scores great, and is really fast. He’s what I ride at all the long-score rodeos and jackpots. These four-head rodeos over long scores are basically just like big jackpots. They’re built for our run and our team.”
“I love it,” Worley added. “I wish they were all four head, so we didn’t have to try to be 3 all the time. It’s just fun. If you draw four that try to outrun you, you aren’t going to win anything. But you can get by one that really tries. And it also gives you more chances to draw one that’ll let you get some of your money back.
“You have to use your head in a setup like this one. You don’t just hit the barrier and use your whole rope. A lot of things can go wrong here, if you don’t keep things under control. You can’t just go as fast as you can, like most rodeos are these days. It feels like team roping again.”
It takes some gas to stay behind that heeling barrier and still catch up to those big muleys with their tails curled up over their backs, and Worley’s sorrel heel horse has got it. Ardie Badger, “Bon Jovi,” is 16 now, and “probably the fastest heel horse I’ve ever ridden,” says Worley, 31, who’s from Berryville, Arkansas. “For a long time, he’d get too strong. He’s just a lot of horse. This horse is a lot of the reason I like coming out here to these California rodeos. There aren’t a lot of places where we get to top speed anymore. It’s fun to have a horse that’s good for this setup, where you actually get to use him. Our combination of horses elevates our team.”
You can say that again.
“Tyler’s horse is one of the best heel horses in the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association),” Crites said. “I don’t think he gets near enough credit.”
Crites and Worley were second high call in Sunday’s Clovis short round behind young bucks Tyler Tryan and Denton Dunning. Brye and Tyler were 8.2 in Round 1; 7.5 to split second and third in Round 2; 8.3 to split fourth and fifth in Round 3; and 9 flat on their last one for third in the short round and first in the average with four runs done in 33 flat to reserve champs Tryan and Dunning’s 33.2 on four.
After growing up heeling, Crites has his sights set on joining the NFR Switch-Enders Club. Before heeling at the NFR, Brye qualified for the College National Finals Rodeo roping behind his other brother-in-law, Blair Small. But Crites has been back and forth more than once. He headed for Buddy Hawkins his rookie year in 2018.
“Courtney has been mad at me since I quit heading the first time,” Brye smiled. “I went back to heading because I had good head horses, and the options for headers are way better than heeling. To me, it’s easier to win as a header if you’ve got the horses.
“Heeling is easier for me. All you have to do is heel them as they turn ’em. Heading takes more thinking and mental work. But because I’ve got the horses, it’s a better business decision for me to head. There are way more good heelers than good headers.”
This is the second full year for Team Crites and Worley, who joined forces in the fall of 2023, at the start of the 2024 rodeo season. Their 2025 spring has been sprinkled with small checks leading into this huge hit at Clovis. They placed in rounds at Austin and San Angelo (Texas), won the second round at Logandale (Nevada), placed at Oakdale (California), then didn’t do any good at Red Bluff. But they just doubled down with wins in both Clovis and Lakeside, California, where they roped last Friday.
And Deuce and Bon Jovi are not alone in the trailer. Crites is hauling three head horses, and Worley has two heel horses in tow. These guys are bullish on big averages, and look forward to running muleys again this week at the three-header in Guymon.
“I love roping muleys,” Crites said. “I’m very confident roping the neck. I’ve roped a lot of muleys. They’re dodgy little rascals, and with that heeling barrier here at Clovis, they’ll peel off to the right trying to get away from you. It’s tricky with these fresh ones, because they’re a little wild handling and you’ve got to not turn ’em over. That last one was getting it down through there.
“I love that a guy’s got to get his neck loop out for a couple weeks right here, and I love these four-headers. I wouldn’t mind if they threw the horns away, and I wish we’d have at least one four-header a month. It’s like a big jackpot. It’s not a reaching and ducking match. You have to score good, run ’em down, catch ’em and handle ’em. It’s not a race. It’s team roping.”
“When you’re roping fresh muleys, especially in the first round, you don’t want to crowd them too much,” Worley said. “You don’t want them to go left here, so the header doesn’t have to come back up the wall. A heeler’s kind of at his header’s mercy here, because he can dang sure make you look stupid if he wants to. Things can get out of control really fast roping 550-pound muleys over a long score in a big arena. You really see the good headers do a good job at this rodeo, and the good head horses really shine here, too.”
Worley, who’s married to Hall of Fame header Bobby Hurley’s daughter Brittany and has a 2-year-old son, Audy, is game for getting back to Vegas. Tyler heeled for Tate Kirchenschlager at his first Finals in 2019, for Jeff Flenniken at his second Big Show in 2020, and roped with Jake Clay at NFR 2023. Does Worley think Crites is a better header after heeling at the highest level?
“I don’t think it hurts, for sure,” he said. “He obviously knows what makes them easier for me to heel, because he’s done it. Brye’s just super talented with a rope. I’ve known him since we were 12 or 13, and he’s always been ropey.
“It’s hard to be gone so long to come out here to California for the spring. But it’d be crazy for us not to try using our horses in setups like this one (at Clovis). We’ve done well at some of the faster rodeos. But when you have to let ’em out there and run ’em down, that head horse of Brye’s makes a really big difference. We’ve roped together enough that we know what to expect out of each other, and we’re getting some more consistency.”
Crites and Worley have been buddying with Corbin Rice and Cooper Freeman. Worley appreciates Crites captaining the ship as much as his handles.
“Brye handles all the entering for all of us,” Tyler said. “I don’t even talk to him about it. He does a great job planning. He’s a thinker.
“This is our biggest win at the rodeos this year (their biggest pop at the ropings was finishing fourth at the BFI for $18,750 a man the end of March). We just started making some good runs, and it finally feels like this’ll help us catch up a little bit.”
With the Clovis money in the bank, and their Lakeside earnings sure to land soon, Crites and Worley are on the rise in the world standings and appreciating their partners, both horse and human.
“Tyler’s the most positive guy in the world,” Crites said. “You can’t get him down, and you can’t get him mad. He’s not worried about it. We dang sure needed this. My leg is finally starting to feel healthy, like it doesn’t hurt anymore to use it. I’d like to think we’re getting the ball rolling.”
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