Dear Roper,

I was sitting at the end of the arena at a roping with my camera earlier this year, just making conversation with the other folks watching. 

The guys there asked me who I worked for, so of course I said this magazine. Sometimes, that answer invites commentary, whether I want it to or not. This was one of those times. 

The comments were focused on the coverage of the horses in this magazine, with the main takeaway that the futurities and the stallion incentives are for the rich guys, and the little guys are getting left behind. The gentlemen told me they just want to rope for fun, and this futurity stuff isn’t that. 

I can see the perspective—none of what we do in team roping is cheap. And nothing about the futurities involves cost-saving, really. We’ve certainly leaned the futurity direction pretty heavy, because as Denny Gentry always reminds me—I really enjoy it, and it shows in the magazine. 

But that made me think perhaps I haven’t made something clear enough in how we cover all of this. When we write about these futurities, the focus is the horse and the horsemanship required to play this game—because roping for fun is more fun when you can catch the steer for a whole lot of money. The best guys in the world have said, as long as I’ve been asking the questions, that horsemanship is the key to more consistent catches. Jake and Clay preach it. Speed and Rich? Well they always said Viper, Bob, Roanie and Chili Dog were the magic in that eight-year run. 

We hear you, though, and we’ll be sure to keep the roping in The Team Roping Journal. Look for a team-roping-without-a-trust-fund story coming soon. Hopefully a feature on roping cattle on page 70 gets your roping-junkie brains going. We’re heading into The Patriot, the NTR Finals and the US Finals season, so expect these pages to be jam-packed with jackpotting at all levels in the next few months. Because—balance. 

Chelsea