Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i The Team Roping Journal

The interconnectedness of the cowboy world will always be an amazing thing to me. At this point, there are somewhere around four or five generations of people who’ve been around ranching, rodeo, team roping and horses. With such a longstanding tradition of families, it’s no wonder that people have close connections spanning the decades. But unexpected connection arose in the process of putting this issue together that made my day. I interviewed Colby Lovell for our Rodeo Horsepower piece (p. 56) about his 9-year-old sorrel gelding he calls Big Time. He’s roped at some ProRodeos and the BFI on the horse, but he really shines as a ranch rodeo horse. In fact, he was recently named top horse at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Ranch Rodeo. As Colby told…

It’s been said that a cowboy should only expect one great horse and one great dog in a lifetime. Colby Lovell thinks he’s got the horse. But despite being perhaps the best horse he’s ever owned, Come Back Spoon, or “Big Time,” isn’t Lovell’s top head horse. Though he’s a five-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifying header, Lovell enjoys ranch work—working cows with horses and dogs—as much as he does turning steers. And it’s in the everyday cowboying that Big Time has proven himself to the Madisonville, Texas, roper. “I do everything on him,” Lovell said of the 9-year-old. “I work cows on him. He’s tied in my arena right now, we worked a pen of bulls this morning. He’s a good horse. I can put him in the trailer…

He dominated the 25-head average—five rounds of tie-down roping, steer wrestling, heading, heeling and steer roping—by a 28-second margin over the field, which was led by seven-time Timed Event titlist Trevor Brazile. With 267.9 on 25, Paul David broke Daniel Green’s previous record of 276.1 from back in 2008. Paul David was paid handsomely for his over-the-top efforts, with a $113,000 paycheck that included the $100,000 champ’s check, $3,000 for the new record and turning in two of the fastest six rounds of the 2016 event. “This is life-changing money,” said Paul David of the $100,000, which was a 100 percent raise over the already impressive $50,000 he won with the title two years ago. “It’s huge for a cowboy. It’s not every day you get to put a check…

If it’s possible to win $50,000 at the wrong time, Cody Doescher did so in 2011. The Oklahoma City heeler won Rodeo Houston that year, the first time it broke away from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and the money from the tournament-style rodeo didn’t count toward the world standings. Though Doescher would have made his only qualification to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in 2011 had the money counted, he still proudly wears the buckle representing the biggest win of his career. “I had never run a steer with Tommy Edens before there,” Doescher remembered. “We were the first team out of the whole rodeo, and I didn’t rope very good in the first Super Series. We won just enough to get by. We made it through the semifinals,…

Number and End: 6+ Header Association of Preference: Whatever is the closest and the best. We usually have to go at least 100 miles to get to a roping. Most recently I’ve started going to the World Series, and we do a lot of amateur rodeos around home. Rope of Choice: Rattler and Cactus Ropes Biggest Win: I won $11,000 at the US Finals in Oklahoma City in ’94. We finished third in the #15. That was probably my biggest win. Your Favorite Roping: Probably the World Series ropings. We only get to about one in-state. This was my first year at the Finale. I didn’t do any good out there, but it was fun. Best Horse You Ever Ridden: Both the horses I’m riding now. Rebel is a 14-year-old…

Through the growing pains of beginning a new rodeo tour—plus plenty of Internet gossip over the last 12 months--the Elite Rodeo Association opened its eight-stop, $4.6-million Premier Tour in Redmond, Ore., to a packed house March 25 and March 26 in the Bank of the Cascades Center, with the critical eye of most of the rodeo world watching. Fitting then, that Derrick Begay and The Champ—Clay O’Brien Cooper, who himself has made so much team roping history over the last three decades—were the ones to win the inaugural performance of the new-look rodeo association geared toward bringing bigger payouts, fewer stops, broader commercial appeal and more stability to the lifestyle of the rodeo cowboy. Seba Delkai, Arizona’s Begay threw a whole lot of line with the three-foot-under barrier, and The…

THE ROSE PALACE HAS A NEW SHERIFF. He’s not old enough to drink alcohol, but he still caused fans watching the 34th annual George Strait Team Roping Classic online and in person, March 21, in Boerne, Texas, to shake their heads and ask, ‘Who’s the big guy in the pink shirt?’ The world took notice for good reason. Among nearly 600 of the best teams in the world during the two-day knife-fight that is also the richest Open roping in the world, Dustin Egusquiza and Kyle Lawrence out-roped two guys who sport six gold buckles. The pair graciously accepted from George Strait himself two Chevy trucks, two Bruton trailers and a whopping $122,000 a man—and took it all home to the Southeast. The gravy is that they did it by…

FINDING THE PERFECT CORNER Generally speaking, when my position coming down the arena and into the corner is good, I make good shots. When it’s bad, it forces mistakes. If you’re too early, you lose momentum on your horse. Your horse stops and the steer gets away and you can rope a leg or miss. If you’re too far away, you have to accelerate to the steer. For most people, you get close enough and just throw, with or without good timing. Then your horse can run through your throw and you’ll miss. With my dun Remix, I’m working on getting a consistent position all of the time. I’m trying to find out what fits him best to get me to the place from where I rope best. Everyone has…

Everything in life is about timing. When you see something that works and is successful, that’s a lot of components coming together at the perfect time. It’s the people behind you and helping you, what you’re working on, your work ethic and your mindset. Everything comes together and—boom—it works. I feel like I’m roping better now than I did in my championship years. A lot of things have to come together for that to happen. One of the big elements is my horse, LB, who’s 19 now. I don’t know how well he would fit anybody else, but he fits me perfectly. Ever since I got him—from Kory Koontz the end of 2012—it’s been like a storybook fairytale. It hasn’t been hard. I just get up in the morning, go…

“SOMETIMES IT’S JUST YOUR DAY.” -CLAY TRYAN Clay Tryan is enjoying an 18-year career roping for a living. In that time, there has only been one event he’s entered each of those 18 years: RodeoHouston. Yet for all his accomplishments, it was the one rodeo he’d never won. When he and fellow three-time world champion team roper Jade Corkill stretched their final-round steer in 4.7 seconds and took $50,000 per man home from the NRG Stadium in Houston, there were…ahem…no problems. “I’ve been to that rodeo 18 times and I finally won it,” Tryan said. “That felt good, I felt like I was due.” But for as good as the rodeo ended, it started a little shaky. Houston’s format divides 40 teams into five “Super Series.” From each series, all…