Walker Guy and Houston Childers won USTRC’s 2023 year-end Resistol Jr. Championships with solid effort. Guy, 16, boasted a total of 162 points in the heading, while Childers, 14, topped the heeling leaderboard with 125 points.
As Resistol Jr. Champions, each took home $1,000, a 40X Arena Resistol Felt, a 20X Wildfire USTRC Resistol Straw and Gist trophy buckles. Making the title even sweeter, the young ropers entered as main partners and longtime friends.
“We’ve known each other since we were in the 7- or 8-point ropings,” Guy noted. “Whenever we realized we were both in first, we wanted to keep entering together. We kept building up points and it paid off.”
That Type of Guy
Hailing from Waynesville, North Carolina, Guy placed in 18 Resistol Jr. points-eligible ropings throughout the season. In May of 2022, he kicked off the year with a 27-point lead after earning points at the North Carolina Championships and continued his hot streak by only ever placing inside the top 5, and regularly in the top 2.
“I won a couple US ropings last year earlier in the season,” said Guy, who will enter his junior year of high school in the fall. “A lot of people didn’t really know about the Resistol Jr. [Championship]. I saw it in The Team Roping Journal, and I wanted to figure out what it was.”
With a lead in the heading, Guy also accumulated points in the heeling by roping with his brothers Tucker, 19, and Parker, 12, who also finished third in the heading.
“Everywhere we go, we will just up-and-back and rope with each other and rope both ways,” said Guy, whose 50 points in the heeling earned him the No. 9 spot on the back end.
The switch-ender learned to rope from Virginia cowboys Derek and Zak Hicks.
“They took a lot of time to teach me how to do it correctly,” Guy said. “I actually taught my two brothers how to rope. We all got to where we could halfway catch and it took off from there.”
His persistence and drive paid off in a big way and, according to Guy, the Resistol Jr. Championship is “one of the better wins I’ve ever had.”
Champion Childers
The 2023 Resistol Jr. Champion Heeler, Childers, of Fairmount, Georgia, set a goal to win the year-end title and exceeded his expectations by earning points at 14 ropings throughout the season and, similar to Guy, with no less than a fifth-place finish.
“I set a goal to place at every US roping I went to,” Childers said. “I’ve always heard the pros talk about the fact that, when you practice, you have to have a goal; so, each time I practiced, I thought about being in a position where I could win money to get the points I needed to win the Resistol title.”
To be eligible for the title, ropers vying for the Resistol Jr. Championship are required to enter at least one Shootout division of the USTRC Cinch National Finals of Team Roping.
“I knew I had to go if I wanted to win it,” said Childers of the 2023 event held in Fort Worth April 23–30. “The heeler behind me placed, but it ended up to where I was high enough that I didn’t have to win out there to win the Resistol title.”
It was a slim 4-point lead on the pack that saved Childers’ No. 1 position and allowed him to take the championship back with him to the Southeast.
“It feels good because I’d read the magazine and sometimes feel like the Southeast gets put below because Texas is where so much of the competition comes from.”
The Southeast can certainly thank the Childers and Guy families for putting the spotlight on the roping action there this year. Along with the Guy brothers, Childers also competes with his dad, Chad, who rode bucking horses, and his mom, Holly, who grew up showing horses.
And for the young heeler, this title came at just the right time.
“I kind of needed a new felt hat,” Childers admitted. TRJ
