We’re digging through our archives for Classic Moments in team roping, and came across this feature spotlighting some of the top new(er) faces of 2016—many of whom are now household names with NFR back numbers and gold buckles to prove it.
Heading into summer, the best team ropers in the PRCA included not just one or two fresh faces, but a large handful of new names. Leading the pack was 22-year-old Kolton Schmidt, on pace to become the first Canadian in history to head at the NFR.
Published in Spin To Win in 2016.
When Schmidt won Redding, California, with Shay Carroll just before Memorial Day, he found himself on top of the world. He’d wrestled the world-standings lead from Clay Smith, who had owned it for more than three months.
At that point, fully nine of the top 20 in both heading and heeling standings had never made the NFR. Team ropers, too, were making up most of the front-runners in what looks to become the first world all-around championship not won by Trevor Brazile since 2005.
How much of a role has the PRCA vs. ERA feud played in the 2016 world standings? We’ve got perspectives from several guys winning this spring. But first, here’s the scoop on which newbies to watch out for–and why.
Maple-Leaf Magic
The NFR has never featured a Canadian header, but Schmidt and Levi Simpson are on track to change that. The long-time friends, along with Simpson’s heeler Jeremy Buhler, are making a fearsome threesome.
Schmidt sports a college national championship (for Southeastern Oklahoma State University) and has already notched a Canadian championship and two CFR average titles, plus a record as the youngest CFR contestant ever at 17. Schmidt is higher in the standings than Carroll because, thanks to the PRCA’s by-laws ousting ERA shareholders, he got into San Antonio with Tommy Zuniga and won about $14,000.
Simpson and Buhler, both 28, have even more experience. Simpson, a two-time Canadian national champion, was brought up in a hunting/outfitting family in Claresholm, Alberta. He’s been six times to the CFR, setting the single-season earnings record there in 2014.
Buhler was just a kid in British Columbia and his mom was a grocery cashier when a fateful shopper told her he was going roping. The man invited them to come check it out, and her boys got hooked. A decade later, Jeremy and his brother notched a six-figure win at the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale in Las Vegas. More recently, they camped with Doug Wilkinson in Alberta, picking his brain and enjoying the opportunity to run 100 practice steers at a time. That’s when, according to Jeremy, he was “finally able to work at it like you read about everyone else working at it.”
Southeastern Stars
Missouri is already known for having produced world-class heeler Paul Eaves, but the Show Me State is trying to send a couple other native sons to the Big Show. Adam Rose and Billie Jack Saebens are Great Lakes Circuit standouts who are making names for themselves now with different partners.
Rose, 38, has been three times to the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo and lives in Willard, where his family ranches. Walt Woodard picked him up last year and they clicked so well that Rose nearly made his first NFR (Woodard takes the blame for performance woes that cost Rose a trip). This season, the pair won Guymon and were high-team-back or close to it at three other rodeos–out of only eight they entered–to rank in the Top 15.
Saebens, 27, was born in Owensville and learned to rope from his grandfather. But he’s been a Prairie Circuit star since he started training for Dixon Flowers Quarter Horses in Nowata, Oklahoma. In just his fourth year with a PRCA card, he’s in the standings with Coleman Proctor. But he also won Rodeo Austin just before splitting with Cale Markham, and won Oakdale with Luke Brown when Proctor was at the RNCFR.
Brown’s homestate of North Carolina also produced IPRA superstars in 26-year-old Caleb Anderson of Charlotte and his header, 23-year-old rookie Jacob Dagenhart from Statesville-who are also in the top 20 in the world right now.
Anderson is the only team roper to have won the International Finals Rodeo three times straight. He didn’t grow up roping but cut his pro teeth on a few circuit rodeos in Colorado and has made several trips to Texas to rope with his Carolina buddy Cory Kidd, also a Statesville native who now lives at Martin Lucero’s place.
Usual Suspects
Every year, a couple of phenoms appear in rodeo’s upper ranks who were basically bred to do it. This season, those include header Zac Small and heelers Quinn Kesler, Wesley Thorp and Tyler McKnight.
Kesler, 23, was raised by team roping producers in Utah who raise team roping horses and home-schooled Quinn around team roping. He got his PRCA permit in 2011, then spent two years on a mission for the Mormom Church before teaming with two-time world champ Matt Sherwood. They have been electric ever since.
McKnight, 27, was also raised by team roping producers and is from Wells, Texas. He first made a top-20 splash with Tyler Wade in 2012, then won Salinas last year with Jake Cooper. Unfortunately, he spent some time out with a broken collarbone and finished 17th, while Cooper roped with Russell Cardoza at the NFR. This year, they’re on a mission to do it together.
Thorp is only 20 and in just his first year of full-time competition. He grew up in a ranching family in Throckmorton, Texas, but developed his skills in Stephenville, where he still lives, to rope against the best. He has finished two years of online courses as a business major at Ranger College and had a berth at the CNFR as the third-place heeler from the Southwest Region.
Small, 21, of Welch, Oklahoma, is eyeballing veterinary school in the fall, so he’s taking advantage of the summer PRCA run with Thorp. The Small kids have slept, breathed and eaten team roping since birth, and Zac’s sister, Courtney–an annual standout at the World Junior Team Roping Championship–roped with him for Tarleton State University.
Why they’re winning
For the first time in a decade or so, team ropers at the PRCA rodeos do not have to contend with a large handful of recent world champs. PRCA by-laws have disallowed 2016 memberships for handfuls of veterans who typically win hundreds of thousands of PRCA dollars. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Besides the carrot of the biggest NFR purse in history, a few other factors have spurred this new talent. For one thing, these guys have grown up with more access to instruction from superstars–even on DVD–than any other generation. Secondly, they’re smart about riding good horses. And third, they’re seriously committed.
With the help of Wilkinson, Buhler was able to buy “Fabio”–a young, athletic powerhouse gelding from Ty Smith that is just coming into his own–while Saebens has the pick of D-F Rope Horses–a sorrel mare named Legend and a little black gelding he calls Kevin. Small has a really good head horse and Thorp has been riding a seasoned gelding he calls Dennis for over a year. They know the value of horseflesh. But so does Eaves, who added to Cadillac with Spade and Guapo. Clay Smith let him head one on Marty recently and the gray felt as awesome as he looks.
“The head horse makes the team, pretty much,” Eaves said. “The team that’s winning, most likely, the head horse is pretty darn good.”
Sherwood is riding one of the Kesler family’s best mounts, while Walt Woodard said Rose has a great horse, and he’s riding “Blueberry”–the blue roan he hand-raised, broke and trained with Travis and that’s likely to get Walt back to the NFR in yet another decade.
Finally, these guys are not approaching this rodeoing thing like school’s out for summer. They’re serious. Small and Thorp set a goal to simply catch as many steers as they could, which is working outstandingly. Down to the last guy, they have a specific goal of roping in Vegas in December. They approach it like a job, which brings to mind what Walt Woodard calls the logistics of rodeo.
“Yes, these young guys are talented, but it takes a lot more than that, and maybe they’re figuring that out,” said Woodard.
“It takes managing themselves correctly, like knowing where to keep horses and whether to take a commercial flight or charter; whether to enter Reno for the same day as the BFI; how to manage their rodeo count. For instance, there’s four rodeos you can hit this weekend in Texas, all real close to Stephenville. You can burn up four, right there in the snakepit. It’s like, ‘Is this the hill I want to die on?’ No, I’m only hitting one so that I have a rodeo left when I get to Oregon that paid $2,000 last year and a 6.8 won it. That’s the stuff Adam never had any help with.”
The other reason
Nothing for decades has shaken up professional rodeo like the formation last fall of the Elite Rodeo Athletes. It was started by several PRCA veterans so that contestants could make more money while traveling to fewer events and fans could watch only “elite” ropers and riders. Meanwhile, the PRCA sanctions about 600 rodeos with several held at the same time and most allowing anyone to enter.
The PRCA responded to the new group by creating by-laws preventing ERA shareholders from buying PRCA memberships.
So throughout this PRCA season, the team roping has been missing several of its stars, including headers Derrick Begay, Chad Masters, Clay Tryan and Trevor Brazile, and heelers Kollin VonAhn, Clay O’Brien Cooper, Jade Corkill and Patrick Smith. What’s that feel like to the guys still on a full-time PRCA schedule?
Jake Cooper, who’s on track to make the NFR a third time in 11 years, says it’s weird not to see his buddies all of a sudden. But he discounts that alone as a factor in 2016 being the year of The Others.
“It looks a lot like Clay and Paul’s year,” he cracked.
True, Smith and Eaves had a great 2015 season and had a stranglehold on the world standings starting in February. Eaves, too, missed seeing his buddies last spring. But did he think it was easier to win? Maybe at the rodeos with longer scores and more go-rounds, he said, because those are strong points of elite guys–being able to go catch and be sharp.
“The way I see it, I’m supposed to do my job, and if Clay and I are roping our best, it really doesn’t matter who’s there or not there, we’re going to win money,” he said.
The other veterans are of a similar mind, and Sherwood points out there are still so many guys who can stick the bones and grab the feet that it’s not like the best are all gone, and now there’s only a bunch of incentive teams left. Kory Koontz, a 44-year-old veteran of 20 NFRs, says the complexion of the world standings is definitely different because of the missing ERA ropers.
“Normally, you do have some young guys that had a good winter sprinkled through the standings in May, but at Reno time and through the summer, I think the cream will rise like it usually does and the other guys weed themselves out and have to fight for the bottom spots.”
Thorp says it’s the averages at the rodeos that have been softer, and maybe a guy who wins sixth or seventh ends up fourth or fifth now. But Cooper brought up another effect that is definitely tied in.
“Without those guys, there’s more money in the pot to be won but there’s also the confidence a younger guy gets when he doesn’t see those guys there, when he knows he doesn’t have to beat Trevor or Clay,” he said. “What ends up happening is that you do your job a little bit better and it’s amazing how you end up winning more when you don’t beat yourself.”
The youngsters agree, and mostly see the void as an invitation to step up to the plate.
“Us guys that are kind of the middle class of rodeo, it does give us more of a chance,” Anderson said. “Now some others in the top 30 can come up a little easier, which is why you’re seeing a lot of guys you’ve never even heard of, like us.”
Buhler doesn’t feel the PRCA rodeos this season have been more of a cakewalk, and is even a little disappointed not to get to butt heads with those guys. At the same time, this is still the best season he’s ever had. Schmidt is also realistic, pointing out there are 60 to 100 PRCA team ropers who rope very, very well and are not easy to beat.
“It opens the door in a sense, but there are a lot of guys trying to get through that door,” he said. “I don’t think it means there are more paychecks necessarily available, but I think it speeds up the process of guys stepping up their game a little faster.”
He points out that the same guys winning at the rodeos are also placing at the jackpots, which are open to the world. As for Saebens, he’s actually heard people say this will be the easiest year to ever make the NFR. He’s not so sure.
“A guy still has to win $70,000 by October 1, and still has to catch the same amount of steers to do it,” he said. “I’m just trying to focus on that.”
Is there an asterisk?
Cooper said he hopes the youngsters don’t fall into the trap of thinking they only made the NFR in a bottom hole because some elite ropers were out–that they’d feel a virtual asterisk next to their names.
“It’s still tough out here and you still have to rope good every day,” he said.
So if Smith and Eaves keep dominating and go home with gold buckles in December, would the fact that ERA talent was missing have any role in how they viewed the titles?
“Honestly, it wouldn’t bother me,” Eaves said. “Over an entire year, those guys would have won a lot of money for sure. But with a gold buckle, a lot has to do with how you rope at the Finals. So if I’m happy with my performance in Las Vegas, I’m good.”
It should be noted that Eaves was asked to join the ERA, and because they had no room for Smith, he said no.
Koontz feels much like Eaves about whether there’s a virtual asterisk next to the 2016 champs. He could care less. Money is money and the NFR is still the NFR. Still, he’s not too proud to say that he’d just as soon not have to beat the guys who aren’t entered.
As for the youngsters, they’re trying to just show up and rope and not get too distracted by it all. From a distance, they’re proud of the ERA guys. The Canadians watched their own guys band together and fight to get team roping a better platform in the CPRA.
“I really like what they’re trying to do, but there’s a lot we don’t know about it,” said Buhler. “I’m just trying to focus on the association I am able to rope in. Maybe it’s the Canadian coming out in me, but I just try to stay neutral.”
Schmidt said he hopes the missing ropers can stick to their guns, and Thorp respects them a lot for what they’re doing, he said. Cooper and Woodard see the feud as all about choice, and they simply love rodeoing.
“The NFR pays $30,000 a night, and I can’t wait to get there,” Woodard said. “My dad was a horse shoer and my mom cleaned houses, and that’s more money than they made together all year long. Guys are making $160,000 at the NFR. You know how much money that is?”
Woodard, for the record, does not believe in asterisks. He says you can’t qualify any championship for who did not have to be defeated.
“What about the guy who got hooked on drugs and drinking?” he asked. “You didn’t have to compete against him.”
But Koontz points out one final perspective. If there is any kind of asterisk, it occurs on both sides. He said to be considered the best in the world, you should have to beat the entire world–and that’s true for ERA world champions too, who did not have to compete against, say, Kory Koontz.
“I’d take a world championship in either organization,” Koontz added. “We’re just trying to make a living. We need the ERA to work. No one in the PRCA has ever been able to make enough money to retire from our sport with anything to show for it.”
