Tate Kirchenschlager and Starlight Oak 017 is the 2024 AQHA Senior Heading World Champion, while his cousin, Dakota Kirchenschlager, and DT Hickorys Playtime, are the 2024 AQHA Senior Heeling World Champions.
Both men helped each other to win the title in Oklahoma City Nov. 3, with Dakota, 33, winning in a rope-off against Cade Rice and Roll Your Nickles, in which Tate headed for both men aboard Starlight Oak 017, too.
For the Senior Heading, Tate, 32, won owner Inderman Schaffner LLC $23,967.33 for the 2017 stallion by Starlights Gypsy out of Lenas Oakling.
The Senior Heeling title paid Dakota and owner DT Horses $26,154.82 for the 2017 mare by Hickory Holly Time out of Play Like Clay.
The cousins—who grew up an hour and a half from one another in Yuma and Kersey, Colorado, respectively, both train horses now after their ProRodeo careers took them to the Finals. Tate lives in Stephenville, and Dakota lives north in Whitesboro, but they rarely help each other in the show pen.
“I would honestly say if you ask both of us, we probably try too hard for each other,” Tate said, explaining why they don’t often help one another. “I want to see everybody win, but I do want to see Dakota win probably more than anybody in the heeling, and I’d say he’d probably say the same about me in the heading. I know when I back in there heading for him, there’s extra pressure. I can say that.”
“We love each other and we hate each other,” Dakota added, joking. “We both give each other more crap than anybody. We’re our biggest fans, and we’re the hardest on each other. When one of us thinks it looks good and the other one tells it looks horrible, we know we’re honest with each other. I mean, I bounce ideas off of him all the time. He bounces ideas off of me. He’s a great horse trainer. I mean, we love each other. We truly do. And for him to do that today, and I was helping him. That was amazing.”
AQHA Senior Heading World Champion: Starlight Oak 017 and Tate Kirchenschlager
Starlight Oak 017 had won $63,324 (per QData) before picking up the big check in the AQHA’s Senior Heading on Nov. 3, but still, the stud had flown relatively under the radar. That’s in spite of being a full sibling to American Greed, Lari Dee Guy’s horse who Trevor Brazile showed to high-money futurity horse status back in 2021, and Parker County Oak, the gelding Jake Cooper rode at the NFR in 2015, then let his sister, Jill Tanner, ride to win the $100,000 American Rodeo breakaway title on in 2021.
Watch Tate Kirchenschlager’s Full Training Program, ONLY on Roping.com
“I don’t even think Tyler started roping on this horse until he was almost 5 years old,” Tate said. “He just kind of used him as a ranch horse. Then the futurity deal was here and he thought, well, we better get to roping on him. And Tyler’s honestly done everything with him. I’ve had a chance to show him a couple times, and that’s about. He didn’t have a fair shake at being a futurity horse. It wasn’t like he got started in the roping as a 3-year-old and shown as a 4-year-old.”
The sorrel stud has mostly been a help horse for Tate, running dozens of steers at the American Rope Horse Futurity Association World Championship in October.
“He stays at Tyler’s most of the time,” Tate said. “Honestly, before the Fort Worth Futurity, shoot, Tyler used him outside ranching on him. This horses, I guarantee he’s been more miles outside than he has steers in an arena. And then Tyler brought him to me two days before the Rope Horse Futurity and I practiced on him once. I bet I made 40 help runs on him at Fort Worth, then Tyler took him back. He brought him in my house one day before the World Show. I ran five steers on him, and we brought him up here. So I mean, he’s going to work the way you ride him. If you want to make a rodeo run or a help run, ride him that way. If you want to show him, ride him like you’re showing, and he’s going to work.”
The good-minded stud comes by it naturally, with his cross producing some of the winningest horses in the sport of team roping over the last decade in the Starlight Gypsys raised by JoAnn Parker.
“Tyler’s wife could literally rope on him the day he gets home,” Tate said. “He, he’s just a good, good horse. He don’t have to be stalled up. You can turn him out. He’s just a good all-around horse. He wasn’t raised in a show barn or nothing like that, and he didn’t go through the Snaffle Bit sale. I mean, he was raised on a working ranch and yeah, that’s what he is.”
AQHA Senior Heeling World Champion: DT Hickorys Playtime and Dakota Kirchenschlager
Dean Tuftin’s DT Hickorys Playtime was, alternatively, an NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity standout as a 3-year-old, winning $30,000 for sixth in 2020, having earned $59,891 in her limited career leading up to the 2024 AQHA World Show.
Watch Dakota Kirchenschlager’s Full Training Program ONLY On Roping.com
“We got her when she was 6 in July of last year,” Dakota said. “They had roped on her a little bit at Dean’s. I don’t know exactly how much, but she was definitely started, and we just kind of took off with her from there.”
Her only other team roping check came in Rock Springs this past year in the jackpot held alongside the Royal Crown, picking up $3,450 for first in the #16. She made the finals in the Platinum Medal as a 6-year-old, but they had bad luck. She was good on two in Fort Worth in 2023, too, but again had tough luck with a third-round no-time. So, while Dakota has plenty of big-name horses in his program, this mare, like Tate’s stud, flew under the radar in the heeling.
But she’s a Hickory Holly Time, and that counts for something, because they’ve been proven winners in the team roping. The former World’s Greatest Horseman champ is 2024’s leading sire of money earners across all roping disciplines, with $474,301 won before the World Show. He’s second all-time with $1,252,974 in progeny earnings, behind only Metallic Cat—who has nearly twice the performers on record per QData’s leaderboards as of Nov. 4. Dakota won the first Riata Open on a Hickory Holly Time mare, too—DT Hickorys Mistycat.
“At the end of the day, at the end of an event, whether it’s the World Show, the Riata, the Futurity, it takes a horse that is very special to have the stamina to go for four days,” Dakota said. “I mean, we’ve been here for three, four days now. It’s cement everywhere. You put 10 bags of shavings in there and they’re still going to get sore and tire and them horses, they’re always there. There’s something about ’em. I’ve had great success with ’em, whether it’s heading on ’em or heeling on ’em. I look up sometimes and I’ll have 10 or 15 Hickory Holly times at my house, and we got some we haven’t showed any yet. We’ve been roping calves on them other people own. I think the horses are going to do some huge things. I’m very excited for the future of everything Dean’s done for me with the Hickory Holly Times. And I think that it’s just a good horse is a good horse, and they’re very exceptional that they can go hard and you can take ’em and haul ’em across the world, and they can still—when most horses are getting tired and giving up—them horses, they’re right there ready to finish the job.”
—TRJ—
