Dakota Lindboe, 35, seemed a perfect candidate for our Military Salute, considering he spent his teen years spinning steers for Kaleb Driggers and Clint Summers and his adulthood in the Air Force calling air support in war zones.

But when we phoned Lindboe in early July, he sounded distracted and said he’d have to call back. That’s because he was literally walking the banks of the Guadalupe River to search for victims in the human recovery effort following the catastrophic flooding in Kerrville, Texas.  He’d seen our post about rescuers needing old ropes, so he’d also gathered up all his used Cactus twines and recruited a buddy to stop at their headquarters and grab three boxes full. 

Rodeo to War Zone

Lindboe was raised in North Florida where his dad and granddaddy roped, where Speed Williams was raised and where Charles Pogue and Britt Bockius would come hang out during the local rodeo. As a kid, he attended Spunk Sasser camps and headed for Driggers—now a three-time world champ—at junior rodeos (they won a year-end title). Then he competed at amateur rodeos before enlisting in the Air Force out of high school.

Sixteen years later, he’s still serving his country as an instructor of the Air Force’s Special Warfare Assessment and Selection course. But for 13 years after Lindboe roped every day with Summers, he never backed into a box. Because for a decade at Fort Bragg, the Army base in North Carolina, he knew that any given day he might get deployed.

Four years ago, he’d just returned from a deployment when he saw an ad for Charly Crawford’s free American Military Celebration clinic. He applied, but didn’t get in and then got deployed again anyway. When he was accepted in 2022, he drove down to Florida to pick up his dad and they drove out to Decatur. 

“It had been so long since I’d roped,” Lindboe said. “I didn’t have a horse or anything. When I told the coordinator that, she called a guy in North Carolina who took an awesome horse out there for me to rope on. He didn’t even know me! But now he’s one of my best friends. I tell him whenever I see him that he’s the only reason I’m roping again.”

Back in the Box

Since 2023, Dakota and his wife Mandy, also active-duty in security forces, have been stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. They’re raising three girls, ages 10, 13 and 14, in the suburb of Floresville.

Now they own horses. Dakota went back to Crawford’s clinic two more times, and last year placed third in the ProAm heeling for Nelson Wyatt. Roping as a kid probably padded his work ethic, Lindboe said. And today it gives him a much-needed respite.

Because Lindboe, as a Tactical Air Control Party, spends every workday preparing prospects to get certified to become like him, a Joint Terminal Attack Controller—the guys in the movies telling the pilots where to drop the bombs.

“We’re held to a little bit higher standard than the regular Air Force,” said Lindboe, whose division is called Special Warfare. “When we deploy, we get attached to whatever team needs a JTAC, whether it’s Green Berets, SEALs, Marines or Infantry. We go out with them.”

The Air Force has a two-year pipeline to weed out the untrainable and funnel good prospects into one of four special-operations fields. They come first to Lindboe, who gets them prepared with three-a-day workouts on very little sleep.

“We’re out there with the students every step of the way, and we stress them out as much as we possibly can,” said Lindboe. “That’s where the sleep deprivation comes in and we see how they handle all the physical strain.”

A man of few words, Lindboe merely says the job can get pretty hectic. 

“In a gunfight, if we were taking contact from somewhere else, we were measuring that from a map and passing that up to the aircraft,” he said. “Now, we have apps on phones with range finders that automatically give us the grid.”

What’s Next for Dakota Lindboe

Now that his home base is Texas, this American hero is a 5.5 header and has been entered up almost every weekend. He placed second in the #13.5 at the Lone Star Shootout with Justin Copp to split $25,600.

“I’ve got some pretty jam-up horses now,” he said. “I’ve got a big sorrel I bought last year from Cash Duty. And this year I bought another good one from Justin Johnson.”

Lindboe is planning to make his first trip to Vegas this December for the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale.

“The last thing I went to that was even close was the USTRC Finals in Oklahoma City back in 2004 or ‘05,” he said.

—TRJ—

Thank you to Equinety for helping us share stories of military members, veterans and first responders in the team roping community.