Paul Eaves probably wasn’t supposed to win the 2008 Wildfire Open to the World.
At 17, he was a little known talent fresh out of Missouri and still getting his bearings in Texas. He was living at Allen Bach’s place, learning how the big leagues of roping operated. He had no good horse of his own that could handle the long barrier and hard-running steers the Wildfire was known for. He didn’t even have a hat.
“That was probably the first big win I ever had,” Eaves said. “I had just moved to Texas. I didn’t know much about anything. Where I came from, something like the Wildfire felt so far away you didn’t even think about it.”
The day before the event, he sold a horse just to afford the entry fees. Bach loaned him a dun gelding that could handle the setup, and Eaves entered with two headers—Justin Parish and Kelsey Parchman, a friend from back East.
“I was high call with Kelsey and probably eighth or ninth call with Justin,” Eaves recalled. “I roped a leg with Justin, so that took us out. But me and Kelsey won it.”
Just like that, Eaves had won the Wildfire—one of the richest and most respected open jackpots in the country. The prize money totaled more than $55,000, which for a teenager days away from turning 18, was a seismic shift.
“My parents came out for my birthday, which was the day after the Wildfire,” he said. “They thought we were going to a little local roping. They had no idea what it was. I didn’t either, really.”
What came next was almost more impressive than the win itself. The very next day, Eaves headed to Stephenville for a Coors Open—another massive jackpot, drawing hundreds of teams. He teamed up with Philip McCoy and Chad Masters and walked away with first and second in the roping, pocketing another $6,000.
“In two days, I made close to $60,000,” Eaves said. “That meant more to me than anything, even more than confidence. I needed the money.”
With his earnings, Eaves bought the dun horse from Bach that had carried him to the Wildfire win and another sorrel that had already been to the Finals. That investment in horsepower laid the foundation for everything that came next in his career.
“I didn’t have anything that could handle setups like that,” Eaves explained. “That dun horse, he could fly. I’m pretty sure I rode him at Salinas. He could beat the header to the cow.”
Eaves also credits that win with giving him something less tangible, but just as important.
“It made me feel like I could actually do this,” he said. “I felt like I did something. I’d been to big ropings before and not done much. Now I had a little money and a little momentum.”
His parents, watching from the sidelines, got a crash course in what team roping at that level looked like. And Eaves? He got a crash course in what it felt like to win—and win big.
“That weekend really set the tone for what was possible,” he said. “It didn’t make me think I was the best or anything like that, but it made me realize that I could get out there and compete with those guys.”
His gear that day reflected his underdog status. With no hat of his own, he and friends Andrew Ward and Luke Brown stopped by a gift shop across from Fort Worth’s North Side. “It was probably a $15 hat, maybe less,” Eaves laughed. “That was my hat for Wildfire.”
Despite the modest gear and borrowed horse, the Wildfire win lit the fuse on a career that would include 11 NFR qualifications, two world championships and a seat at the elite table of professional team roping.
It wasn’t immediate. That year, Eaves finished second in the Rookie of the Year race behind Rhen Richard.
“For some reason, I made that a bigger deal than it probably was,” he admitted. “We weren’t good enough to make the NFR, so I just focused on trying to get ahead of him. But I was losing too much.”
The Wildfire gave Eaves the one thing every young cowboy needs: proof. Proof he could rope under pressure, proof he could hang with the best, and proof that this dream—this often brutal, high-stakes rodeo life—wasn’t out of reach.
Looking back now, years and wins and titles later, Eaves can still trace it all back to that one February weekend in Texas.
“That was the start,” he said. “Everything kind of started there.”
—TRJ—
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