As a rookie coming into professional rodeo, I’d only heard of places with long scores. Where I grew up in New Mexico, there were never any long scores, and most were about average. Then it was all short scores when I amateur rodeoed in Texas.
There are a few basics that help you have success over long scorelines, starting with a horse that scores really good and can run. You can’t be successful if you break the barrier or get left behind. And after that long head start, you need a horse that can catch up. With so much speed built up, a handle that slows things down and smooths out that corner is also important, so you help your heeler and don’t jerk one down.
LISTEN: Long vs. Short Game Evolution
The 40-foot scoreline at Salinas is the longest in our sport, and it’s the only five-steer average rodeo out there. The steers are chute-run, and both guys come from the left side of the roping chute.
Salinas is my favorite rodeo of the whole year for several reasons beyond the cowboy conditions and old-school tradition, including the weather. It’s dirty hot everywhere else you go that time of year, so it’s refreshing to be out there on those misty mornings for slack. And everybody loves getting to run one every day.
If you can stay the course, you can be successful at Salinas. Heelers have a disadvantage there, because with both guys coming from the left, a lot of steers go over to that right track fence and cut in front of them. Heelers stay in catch-up mode, so it’s really important as a header to slow that momentum down to give your partner a chance.
Roping at Salinas reminds me of the NFR grand-entry rehearsal. They make you do it horseback about five times, and all those roughstock guys are whooping and hollering, and having fun making it a horse race while the production people are trying to tighten it up. After about the second run-through, all the horses are acting like runaway racehorses.
READ: Coy Rahlmann’s Salinas-Winning Secrets
Add 10 performances to that, and you can have your horse blown up before he ever backs in the box. That’s why so many guys ride a different horse, or their backup horse, in the grand entry. Because when the announcer tells all those cowboys to tip their hats to the crowd, those horses go to jumping and wheeling out of there.
After you run a steer or two at Salinas, even as slow as they open the gate there, a lot of horses go to jumping around and are hard to hold in there, just like in the NFR grand entry. I was scared to death the first time I roped at Salinas. It was just so foreign to me, and was not the typical hip-to-the-pin setup. I felt like I had to wait 30 minutes for that steer to get to the line.
They put a Styrofoam cup out there in the dirt at Salinas to let headers gauge when to go, which on an average steer is about when his head reaches the cup. Some steers walk to the line, and it’s a big advantage if they run one in there for you that’s kind of lost like that.
The scoreline at Cheyenne is 10 feet shorter than Salinas at 30 feet, and they’re using an electric eye there this year. They draw the steers, which are walking fresh in two rounds of steer roping first. So you get the video on what your steer does from a steer roper.
Cheyenne just added team roping in 2001. The box is shorter and so is the score, so you don’t have to sit there as long as at Salinas. But coming off of all the one-headers over the Fourth of July, it’s sure enough a lot different.
Clay and I won Cheyenne the second year they had it, when they roped muleys in 2002. I was fortunate to win it again with Walt Woodard in 2011, and when Walt and I won, we drew the three best steers there and placed in all three rounds. We couldn’t have hand-picked three better steers, and that win was a major factor in us making the NFR that year.
WATCH ON ROPING.COM: Unlock the Secrets of Successful Heading
—TRJ—
