Team roping offers high drama at Wrangler ProRodeo Championships
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Anyone looking for chewed fingernails and sweaty palms in Dallas need look no further than the team roping. It is by far the event with the most question marks heading into the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Championship, presented by Texas Stampede, Nov. 7-9, in Dallas.
Most of the teams in the Top 15 are secure and set for the 50th Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in December, but a handful of ropers have business to take care of at the American Airlines Center. Tens of thousands of dollars are up for grabs for each contestant in Dallas, but they will have to earn every penny because all events will have stacked fields.
Header Logan Olson, roping with Broc Cresta, needs a big weekend, as he trails 15th-ranked Keven Daniel by $10,600. Cresta trails 15th place Travis Graves by just $766.
“We just need to stick to our game plan that we’ve had all year,” said Cresta, of Petaluma, Calif. “I’m not going to show up to Dallas thinking about how much I need to win. I just hope we draw well, catch our steers, just do our jobs and let everything take care of itself. Hopefully we’ll win enough to get Logan in and also take care of my side.
“There’s a chance to win so much there that there’s no telling what will happen. Team roping is going to be exciting.”
The remaining events won’t feature as much Top 15 drama, but every 10-man field is loaded with talent from top to bottom. World champions and defending Dallas champions will do battle with up-and-coming stars looking to make a name for themselves on a national stage.
The bareback riding features 10 of the cowboys who already have their bags packed for Las Vegas, including two-time and reigning World Champion Bobby Mote, defending Dallas champion Justin McDaniel and Crusher Rentals PRCA World Standings leader Steven Dent. Add in three-time World Champion Will Lowe, 2004 World Champion Kelly Timberman and Wrangler NFR regulars Royce Ford and Chris Harris, and the competition will be fierce.
Steer wrestling will also feature a trio of world champions: reigning World Champion Jason Miller; 2006 World Champion Dean Gorsuch; and 2004 World Champion Luke Branquinho. The man they may likely have to chase is the red-hot Wade Sumpter, who leads the world standings and comes in as the event’s defending champion.
Saddle bronc rider Anthony Bello will return to the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Championship to defend his title, and it will be a tough task. Crusher Rentals PRCA World Standings leader Cody Wright will also be nodding his head in Dallas, as will five-time World Champion Billy Etbauer and 2006 World Champion Chad Ferley, who recently won the Dodge Badlands Circuit Finals Rodeo in Minot, N.D.
Josh Peek has had a bulls eye on his back since winning $50,000 for claiming the tie-down roping title at RodeoHouston in March, and that will be the situation when he arrives in Dallas to defend his Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Championship title. Peek, of Pueblo, Colo., will look to pad his world standings lead over the ever-dangerous Trevor Brazile and a host of other talented cowboys. Included in that group will be 2008 Tie-Down Roping Rookie of the Year and Omaha, Neb., champion Tuf Cooper, Heartland ProRodeo Series Champion Stran Smith and Mike Johnson, who is headed to his 23rd Wrangler NFR this year.
Howdy Cloud and 19-year-old rookie Stormy Wing are each less than $2,000 away from climbing into the top 15 of the bull riding standings at Dallas and thereby chasing Spud Jones and Marcus Michaelis out of berths at the Wrangler NFR. Shawn Proctor (22nd) and Jake Wade (25th) will have to be phenomenally successful and also very lucky at Dallas to punch their ticket for the WNFR.
New format for Canadian Finals Rodeo
EDMONTON, Alta. – The Canadian Finals Rodeo has taken on a new look this year.
For the first time in its 35-year history, the cowboys and barrel racers will carry their season earnings into the $1.13 million showdown at Rexall Place, the 17,000-seat arena that is home to the National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers.
Like the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, contestants now get credit for their season-long achievements.
Previously, the CFR was based on a sudden-death formula with the finalists starting at ground zero. Champions were determined on a 40-to-10 points system for first to fourth in the rounds and the average.
The change was made at the request of the contestants.
They argued that with the purse surpassing the $1 million milestone, the sudden-death element still existed because with the amount of money on the table, no one could win a Canadian championship during the regular season.
They also pointed out it would help encourage more entries at the smaller late season rodeos.
The purse for the five-day, six-round shootout that begins Nov. 5 has also been increased by $50,000. And, it will continue to go up by the amount annually through 2013.
First in a round and the average now pays $9,524, up from $9,048 a year ago. Four monies are paid in rounds and the average.
The CFR brings together the 10 leading money winners in each event as well as the first and second-place finishers in the 10-rodeo Canadian Tour finale.
Eleven of the finalists have also qualified for the WNFR – North Dakota’s season leader Dustin Hausauer, Rod Hay, Chet Johnson and Cody Taton in the saddle bronc riding, Cimmaron Gerke and Dusty LaValley in the bareback riding, tie-down roper Tyson Durfey, steer wrester Curtis Cassidy, who also made the cut in the tie-down roping, and barrel racers Deb Renger, Lisa Lockhart and Traci Dawson.
Durfey and Lockhart won Canadian championships in 2006, the first year the CFR opened its doors to non-residents.
Attendance at this year’s CFR is expected to challenge the 2006 record of 95,552.
Three-time world champion Harley May dies at 82
Harley May, a three-time world champion steer wrestler and member of the inaugural class of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, died Oct. 28 in his Santa Ana, Calif., home after a lengthy battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). He was 82.
One of the first college-educated rodeo cowboys, May entered the pro ranks after his graduation from Sul Ross State College (Alpine, Texas) and won the first of his world championships as a Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA) rookie in 1952.
He would claim the steer wrestling gold buckle again in 1956 and 1965.
Over the course of his career, May won 44 saddles and more than 200 buckles, including championships at the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days; Pendleton (Ore.) Roundup, California Salinas Rodeo, Madison Square Garden Rodeo (New York City), San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo and the Calgary (Alberta) Stampede.
May was born and raised in Deming, N.M., where he worked on his father’s ranch and dreamed of being a rodeo cowboy. When just a teen, he began competing in nearby rodeos and won his first trophy saddle for being the all-around cowboy at a junior rodeo at the age of 13.
His dreams of turning professional would be temporarily put on hold when he enlisted for a three-year stint in the Army Air Corps and served in the South Pacific during World War II. Upon discharge from the military, May went back to work on the ranch – but that didn’t last long.
While plowing the field one day, Bill Rush, a local cowboy, pulled up to the field where May was working. As Harley approached the big convertible and matching horse trailer that he was driving, Rush told him he was hitting the rodeo trail, and that he wanted May to come along. “That was all it took,” May said years later. “I raced back to the house, threw some clothes in a suitcase and headed toward the rodeo in Silver City, N.M. I think I even left the tractor running!”
Realizing the importance of a good education, May began his college career at New Mexico A&M (now New Mexico State), then later transferred to Sul Ross State, where he majored in Range Animal Science and graduated in 1951.
May was a founder of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA) while still a student there and won eight NIRA titles, including the first three all-around buckles.
Always eager to do whatever he could to advance the sport, May held several high-level posts with the RCA, including president from 1957 to 1959, when the organization created the National Finals Rodeo.
He was part of the RCA delegation that went to the White House in 1959 and presented the ceremonial first ticket to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
May’s last administrative position with the PRCA was as Chairman of the Competition Committee, a title he held from 1985 to 1999.
After retiring from full-time rodeo competition in 1970, May moved to Oakdale, Calif. and sold real estate through his California Ranch Brokerage for 20 years, raised paint horses, worked as an environmental engineer on a pipeline project and served as rodeo coach at his alma mater, Sul Ross State, for 3½ years.
Timberman captures title in home state rodeo
Well, that seemed just about right.
For a second consecutive year, the Casper, Wyo., rodeo named in honor of 1976 World Champion Bareback Rider Chris LeDoux presented its bareback riding buckle to another former Wyoming world champion, Kelly Timberman.Timberman, who won his world title in 2004, scored 83 points on Brookman Rodeo’s Cop Out on Nov. 1 to edge Zach Curran by a single point and put $1,019 into his total counting for the 2009 Crusher Rentals PRCA World Standings.
In 2007, Timberman drove the 3.6 miles from his home in Mills, Wyo., to win the A Tribute to Chris LeDoux bareback riding with a score of 86 points on Burns Rodeo’s Dirt Devil.
And even more fitting? Chris LeDoux’s son, Beau, cashed in the bareback riding at this year’s rodeo at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds. He tied for fifth with Wrangler-NFR-bound rider Tim Shirley and eaned $185.
Jess Tierney, the son of ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee Paul Tierney, won the all-around and tie-down championships at Casper. His 9.6 second run beat runner-up Jake Hamilton by three-tenths of a second and paid $1,309.
Three-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifier Bryce Miller won the saddle bronc riding with 89 points on Triple V Rodeo’s Dry Summer.The other event champions were steer wrestler Dennis Hepp, team ropers Miles Kobold/ Doug Cox and C.J. Scheller/Jhett Johnson, barrel racer Sammi Bessert and bull rider Bryan Guthrie.
Upcoming PRCA Rodeos
Nov. 5 2008 Canadian Finals Rodeo, Edmonton, Alberta begins
Nov. 7 2008 Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Championship, Ariat Playoffs, Dallas round begins
Nov. 7 Adirondack Stampede Charity (Glenn Falls, N.Y.) begins
Nov. 8 2009 Heartland ProRodeo Series: Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo (Brawley, Calif.) begins
