Innholdsfortegnelse for Extra April 2021 i The Team Roping Journal

The Team Roping Journal|Extra April 2021

Next Level with Taylor Munsell

What I really focus on with young horses is roping for the horse and not for me, because I do reach a lot. I’ve been really making myself run up in the middle of the calf, be smart and be real sharp and crisp with my neck catch. The biggest deal is this: I want my horse’s front feet moving through my delivery. BOX WORK To address reaching, the first step I take is going back to the box. A lot of my box work is scoring a calf and dropping my hand slow. I want my horse to just walk out. Then, I’ll drop my hand a little faster. I want them to blow out, but not actually run, and stay in the bit. Then, I want to actually…

2 min

The Team Roping Journal|Extra April 2021

The Breakaway Roper’s Grip

Understanding exactly how to hold the breakaway rope affects your ability to control your tip and successfully rope your target. I got WPRA World Champion Hope Thompson to demonstrate for me with these photos so you can really tell what I’m talking about. IN-HAND PLACEMENT The rope is a moving object. So when I hold the rope, I place my thumb in line with the strand of rope that has the hondo on it. I keep that strand between my thumb and middle finger, and I move with it. When I’m just holding the rope, I’m›just›holding it. The major pressure with the thumb or the pinky doesn’t happen until I turn the rope over and bring it back.› FINGER PRESSURE When I break the rope over, I have to squeeze…

1 min

The Team Roping Journal|Extra April 2021

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

In 2020, female ropers for the first time competed for life-changing money in traditionally male ProRodeo. The $750,000 Women’s Rodeo World Championship (WRWC) alongside the PBR World Finals in November, and the $200,000 National Finals of Breakaway Roping (NFBR) alongside the NFR in December were historic inaugural events. “There are so many women who have all the ability, but because of life and family and careers they just stopped rodeoing,” said former NFR tie-down roper and steer wrestler J.D. Crouse, now Chief Marketing Officer for the World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA). “To see them have an opportunity to reengage and reinvest time and energy back into the sport they love—that’s been great. But then to also pay the winner of the breakaway at our Women’s Championship more than $60,000, it…

11 min

The Team Roping Journal|Extra April 2021

Our Times

ca. 1950 Breakaway roping made its national debut at the inaugural National High School Finals Rodeo in 1949—one year after the formation of the Girl’s Rodeo Assocation (predecessor to the WPRA), but at the time, it was a boys-only event. It took just a few short years for the girls to claim the sport, and South Dakota’s Patty Haley was the first female ever crowned World Champion Breakaway Roper in 1953. ca. 1970 The College National Finals Rodeo includes breakaway for the first time in 1969 and Sally Preston, riding for Tarleton State University in Texas, takes the win. A few years later, in 1972, Eastern New Mexico University makes Betty Gayle Cooper (to become Cooper-Ratliff) the first woman to ever be offered a college rodeo scholarship—a stepping stone on…

4 min