Today’s professional team roping world is booming, and I hope the big dogs get how great it is as it just keeps gaining ground. When we first started roping for a living, we had Odessa and Denver to kick off the year before Scottsdale, Tucson and Phoenix, then the California spring run before summer. There was no Fort Worth, San Antonio or Houston for team ropers. Roping and rodeo advance so much every year now, and for every range of roper.
Working-class people also have a huge reason to be in Vegas, thanks to the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale, and there’s even a big open roping there at the South Point for the guys who didn’t make the Finals. There’s no bigger roping fan than me, and everybody always asks me for my picks. It’s anybody’s ballgame now, but just for fun, let’s talk about the rounds, average and world championship race at the Finals.
In my eyes and a lot of others, three teams—Dustin Egusquiza and Levi Lord, Tyler Wade and Wesley Thorp, and Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira—have the best chances to win go-rounds and also the world championship. I don’t have the Cowboy Channel, but I keep up with the results and check to see who’s winning what all the time. Those three teams like to go fast and are obviously very good at it.
It’s totally amazing to me how fast Dustin and Levi are on a year-round basis. So if my life depended on it and you asked who’s going to go really fast and win the most go-rounds, they’d be the ones. They’re also ripe for a world championship, kind of like Kaleb and Junior were when they kept knocking at the door before they finally broke it down.
TWade and Wesley’s run is so fast, too, and winning the world last year gave them a lot of confidence. As much as it pays these days, you can’t exclude anybody. Bobby Hurley and Allen Bach won five rounds in a row to win a world championship. The NFR can humble you, and the teams with nothing to lose are going to go after this year’s $33,687.18 (per man) rounds every night.
Speed Williams and Rich Skelton went out of the average on opening night several times, and weren’t known for the average. But they always found a way. If I was Dustin and Levi’s coach, I’d tell them, “You do you, and go for every round.” As fast as Dustin gets it on ’em right there, there’s no safetying up on the heeling side before he gets trapped in the corner.
Kaleb and Junior are my pick to win the average. Kaleb was a go-for-first-every-night guy early in his career, but they’ve both matured. They’re older, wiser and riding better horses now. And that average check—first pays $86,391.31 a man this year—is an ace in the hole that always factors into the world championship race in a big way when you get to Round 10.
But the average can be a curse, if you only focus on that. I did that one year, and was doing good in the early rounds. So I switched horses, and started playing it safe. Then I hickeyed a horn in the ninth round, and left myself with only one round to salvage my NFR paycheck.
No one has a crystal ball, but roping there 27 times taught me to go there with a team game plan, then stick to the plan and live or die by the sword. The critics all have advice, but like Mike Tyson said, “The fight’s all good until you get punched in the mouth.” Stick to your strategy, even if you get your boat rocked. No one’s had a perfect NFR yet.
—TRJ—
