The Snake River Stampede win in Nampa, Idaho, for $7,823 a man hit all cylinders for Jake Smith and Douglas Rich, impacting their seats in the PRCA world standings, circuit standings and PRCA Playoff Series tour.
Smith and Rich picked up the Nampa win June 21, and though they were both already inside the Top 15 at No. 9 with $48,145.27 won on the year, it also moved them to the top three in the Wilderness Circuit and No. 1 in the PRCA Playoff Series standings.
“It’s one of those deals to where you hear everybody say—and it’s 100% true—it’s catching the right ones,” Smith, 32, said. “Just like that right there. We caught three steers but they were all at Nampa, and Nampa was a tour rodeo, it was the best rodeo that we’ve been to since we’ve left and a circuit rodeo. To get that there was for sure huge. That’s exactly what everybody’s talking about whenever they say catching the right ones, and that’s true. You can catch 10 steers over the 4th of July, and if you don’t win money at the big ones, then heck, there’ll be guys that catch two steers that win more.”
With the NFR Open in July and the Cinch Governor’s Cup in September, the circuit race and the Playoff Series matter more than ever for NFR hopefuls. But in the here and now, the Nampa win was also momentum Smith and Rich were hungry for after a dry spell.
“I would say we probably definitely needed it,” Rich, 30, said. “We kind of got off to a slow start when we first left, and I think that week of Nampa and stuff, those were the only ones we caught, really. So, I think after you catch a couple, make some decent runs, it dang sure starts to feel like it can turn around a little bit. Then we went to Greeley, drew two amazing steers and caught them and are good down there. It dang sure helps getting in a rhythm, catching some and kind of getting things back on track a little bit, seems like.”
Nampa turn around
Smith and Rich had a quiet May, and their June was admittedly off to a slow start. Until Nampa.
“I hadn’t been roping very good at all since we left,” admitted Smith, who made his first trip to the NFR last year with Rich. “Heck, we went to Woodward (Oklahoma in June) and we went to several places, and we hadn’t done very good at all. I think we counted up and, counting Nampa, from the time we left the house until the short round at Nampa, I think we’d been a total of 10 rodeos, and we had three clean runs, and they were all at Nampa. So it had been pretty rough.”
But all it takes is one rodeo to turn things around. Smith and Rich roped their first steer in Nampa June 16, where they were 4.5 seconds to split sixth in the round for $901 apiece. In Round 2, they stayed solid in the aggregate with a 4.6 to punch their tickets to the short round.
They put an end to their dry spell with another 4.6 in the short round to win $703 a man for second in the round and claim the average title with a 13.7 on three head for $6,214 apiece. Smith had been working mentally and physically on turning his roping around the last month, and Rich credits him for making things happen in Nampa.
“Jake did a great job on all three,” Rich, a two-time NFR heeler, said. “He went at all three of ’em and just kind of made my job easy, just catching. Because he was pretty aggressive over there, which I think in a small building like that, you kind of need to be a little bit. We drew good and it just happened to work out in our favor that we got them caught.”
Smith admits their Nampa trip had a common theme—good steers that let everything fall into place. But the confidence he has in Rich on the heel side is far more important.
“It makes it easy where every time I turn the steer, I know I’m going to get doubles back there,” Smith said with a laugh. “All I got to do is if I can get a good start and turn the cow, more than likely, I’m going to win something. So, that makes it nice to have that kind of confidence in your partner to where when things aren’t going good, all you got to do is turn the cow and then things are going to get back going.”
On the head side, Smith called on “Friendly,” a 22-year-old gelding registered Haida Pine Quixote. While he also has More Guns Less Roses, aka “Guns,” with him, Friendly gets the call in the small buildings.
“Guns, I won’t ride him in the smaller buildings and stuff like that,” Smith said. “Friendly will pull and finish better and make stuff happen faster in those little, small setups. So, I’ll always ride Friendly in those little, smaller setups like that. And then I ride Guns at the stuff that’s out in the arena more.”
Rich’s “Junior” sees the majority of their runs, and things were no different in Nampa for the 12-year-old gelding registered Cockys JR Shine.
“He is a bigger, physical horse, and he’s pretty easy to catch on,” Rich said. “You can ride him in any kind of setup; you can ride him at Nampa, where it’s a smaller arena and older steers, to Greeley, where they were a little fresher, to Cheyenne, where they’re running hard, to the jackpots. I ride him dang near any setup, and he always gives you a chance to do good. If you don’t do good, more than likely it wasn’t his fault. It was more than likely your fault.”
Wilderness takeover
The bright lights of Las Vegas matter most to Smith and Rich, of course, but they both see the value in playing the circuit game, too. Though an Okie and a Texan, Smith and Rich claim the Wilderness Circuit, which is comprised of Nevada, Utah and much of Idaho. Being nonresidents means they have to hit more circuit rodeos than the circuit natives, but it’s not so hard when a majority of the rodeos are ones they would be entering anyway.
“Heck, we go to dang near that many anyway if it wasn’t our circuit, so it just made sense to us,” Rich explained. “We could both do it and we’d be together, and it’d be easy to get to the rodeos. You might have to duck off and go to a few smaller ones, but most of the time everybody enters a lot. Nampa, all the ones in Utah like Spanish (Fork) and Ogden, Reno (Nevada) is a circuit rodeo. There’s a bunch of dang good rodeos that are all circuit rodeos, and it just made more sense for us to do that.”
Smith won the Wilderness Circuit in 2024 and will head to the NFR Open in July. While some NFR guys write off the circuit system, Smith recognizes how the NFR Open’s $170,600 team roping purse could greatly impact a team’s season.
“Yes, the NFR is huge, but if a guy can figure it in to where he can get the circuit count and get to the [NFR Open], I know it’s a bunch of hoops to jump through, but if you can get through all that and then make it to Colorado Springs, that deal pays so good,” Smith said. “And it’s against, shoot, a third of the teams—it’s not near as many teams. And there’s so much money to be won there, that’d be a huge shot in the arm right after the 4th of July to go over there and rack up some money.”
Currently, Smith is third in the Wilderness Circuit heading with $15,575.26, and Rich is second with the same amount won
Catch more, worry less
Nampa also pushed Smith and Rich to No. 1 in the PRCA Playoff Series with 534 points. Each year, the Playoff Series culminates in September at the Cinch Playoffs in Puyallup, Washington, followed by the Cinch Governor’s Cup in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Points are awarded throughout the season at select rodeos, many of which are aggregate rodeos making catching a huge priority for Smith and Rich.
“It’s just one of those deals to where the good Lord takes care of everything and just doing your job and stuff like that. For the most part, me and Doug catch, or try to catch, a lot of steers. We may not be the fastest or whatever—Doug likes to track ’em a long ways sometimes—but I feel like that’s kind of what we try to do. And I told him before we left this summer, I wanted to make more short rounds than we made last year.”
Over on the heel side, Rich also wants to keep their catch percentage up, while still winning at the one-headers, too. And, most importantly, he’s just happy to be here.
“It feels pretty good getting on a little roll, catching a few and making decent runs,” Rich said. “Dang sure feels pretty good, which I know it is not easy, for sure. It can turn back around and it can go up and down. But heck, any way that it goes, as long as we’re out here getting to do this, it can’t be bad. No matter what happens, it’s fun to be out here roping and going to all these rodeos. But it sure don’t feel bad catching a couple every now and then either.”
