Coleman Proctor and Logan Medlin stopped the clock in 3.5 seconds as the last team out in Round 7 to get the day money of $33,687.18 a man and their first round win of the 2024 NFR.
The run bumped them from sixth and seventh in the world to fourth, with $236,424.70 and $223,191.49 respectively.
“That was a steer Clay Smith missed the barrier on in the first round, and he was kind of in the middle of the pen,” said Proctor, 39, of Pryor, Oklahoma. “And that can happen a lot of times when the header’s late and the heeler is leaving right behind the nods. So it kind of kept that steer pushed out into the middle. And then when Brenten Hall came back, he got a pretty good start at it. He told me he felt beat, but sometimes you can get a good start, but a bad go, you don’t really get as much send off your horse. But that steer kind of flushed off towards his partner. And so I kind of felt like that was going to be more of the pattern tonight because I knew I was not going to let Heisman be a step behind. And he has a knack of always having me in a position to win big when we need it.”
Heisman, registered as SCR Sporties Playgun by Playgun out of Haidas Sporty by Haidas Little Pep, took his good old time in the box in Round 7, but Proctor was serious about making sure the horse was standing square to leave flat.
“I knew I couldn’t afford to be late,” Proctor explained. “When you see the times on the board that had happened and us in a position where we really need to be winning every night, we need to be up in the top of that round.”
Proctor broke to the pin, and when the steer stepped right, Proctor got it on the horns and Medlin heeled fast.
“It was kind of cool to do it on the old man,” said Medlin, 33, of Tatum, New Mexico, of getting on his two-time Horse of the Year, Nita Win Playboy (“Drago”). “I switched to him a couple of nights ago and just had something kind of stirring in my gut telling me I should give that a shot. And I’m always hesitant about switching out here. I’ve only switched one other time, and it was whenever I got off of him to get onto Cantina (in 2022). And so I feel like when you switch then you start throwing more variables in there and if it don’t go good, you’re wondering if that was the thing. But so if I switch, I want to be a 100% committed to finishing that out, barring injury. And so I made the decision to switch to him, and I knew that, behind Heisman, they’ve had good chemistry before in the past. He started curling his head out of the way and I could see the feet the whole time, and I knew it was going to probably be good whenever I was turning loose of it.”
NFR Team Roping Aggregate Race
In the average race, leaders Clay Smith and Coleby Payne won third in the round with a 3.7-second run and solidified their spot as the only team clean on seven head with a time of 52.50 seconds (Tanner Tomlinson and Patrick Smith’s 2022 NFR aggregate record of 53.00 on 10 head will stand another year). If the rodeo ended tonight, Smith and Payne would win the aggregate and finish the year with $240,444.69 and $249,558.74, respectively, putting them sixth in the world standings.
But seven other teams have six steers down, so a no-time on just one head could mathematically drop them as far as seventh in the aggregate, and plenty of other teams could move up. A mistake on two head, and the aggregate is almost anyone’s ball game.
PRCA Team Roping World Standings Race
In the team roping world standings race, leaders Tyler Wade and Wesley Thorp took a no-time in Round 7 with a miss on the head side, but they stayed in the driver’s seat for the gold buckles just the same. Some day money could have taken some heat off their next three rounds, but if the rodeo ended tonight, they’d still be the world champions with $326,162.79 a piece, ahead of second-place Dustin Egusquiza and Levi Lord by $47,237.39. J.C. Yeahquo and Buddy Hawkins would be third with $270,229.28 and $258,722.84, respectively.
