The Score from The Team Roping Journal

Travis Graves has roped at 14 Wrangler National Finals Rodeos, and when he and Luke Brown ride into the Thomas & Mack in December, they'll have 30 qualifications among them. His road to the 2024 Finals wasn't easy—but Graves' veteran mentality got him there at crunch time and helped the team win when it mattered most. In this episode of The Score, Graves describes how he and Brown thought abou...

Solo Select Founder Melanie Smith joins host Chelsea Shaffer to talk through the new Solo Select Stallion Incentive , which promises hundreds of thousands in new added money annually to the rope horse industry. Plus, they preview the Solo Select October Yearling Sale— the premier online yearling sale, offering the industry's top Western performance prospects across roping, cutting, cow horse and b...

The 2024 ProRodeo season may have come to an end, but the team roping action hasn't slowed down. The final weekend of the ProRodeo season we also crowned champions at the 2024 Riata, and Oct. 6, the Clay Logan Open named its victors. On this episode of  The Short Score , we hear from the Riata #14.5 champions,  Reed Boos  on  Yes Im Sassy  and  Cord Forzano  on S...

The Team Roping Journal's Chelsea Shaffer sits down with Cindy Perez of Cat5 Resources, and owner of up and coming stallion, The Animal, to discuss the horrifying impact of Hurricane Helene on the East Coast region. They discuss trusted nonprofits and how the roping community can offer aid, donations and more to the devastated areas.

With the regular season over, the top 25 heelers will now vote on who deserves the award for AQHA/PRCA Heel Horse of the Year. The Score tapped Logan Medlin, Jake Long, Wesley Thorp, Levi Lord and Paul Eaves for their opinions on who deserves the coveted bronze and the $5,000 prize that goes with it.

Dustin Egusquiza  and  Levi Lord  have take 2024 by storm as the world standings leaders with  $187,771.70  won on the year. Saturday, Sept. 14, Egusquiza and Lord also added the  Pendleton Round-Up  to their resumes. Egusquiza and Lord roped three steers in 17.9 seconds and pocketed $12,223 a piece between the rounds and the average. The win also locked them in...

Which horse deserves to be named the 2024 PRCA/AQHA Head Horse of the Year? And why? We get Brenten Hall, Coleman Proctor, Dustin Egusquiza, Tanner Tomlinson and Tyler Wade to weigh in on who's the best of the best over 80 rodeos in the PRCA. --- This week’s episode of The Score is presented by  Fast Back Ropes’ Hombre . Fast Back Ropes  is thrilled to unveil its latest innovation in rop...

Jake Smith has been toiling away in his arena in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, training horses and paying his dues in anticipation of this moment. Smith, 31, is sixth in the PRCA World Standings with $110,777 won on the head side after spending most of his career a heeler. Smith is a Wildfire Open to the World Champion as a heeler, and in 2023 he won the Riata Championship Open with Douglas Rich, his best...

Kory Koontz qualified for 22 Wrangler National Finals Rodeos, won the NFR average title in 1997 and won every major jackpot along the way. But when he stepped away from professional rodeo—after seasoning iconic reacher Dustin Egusquiza—Koontz found himself re-creating his life from the ground up, learning how to budget and to manage a teaching business, all while starting life with his new wife. A...

It was a weekend for the " underdogs " with teams outside the Top 15 raking in and climbing in the PRCA world standings. Tanner Tomlinson and  Patrick Smith  have been fighting tooth and nail to climb in the standings, and they’ve landed themselves both at 21st in the world after a $14,064-a-man weekend. Tomlinson and Smith won the Farm-City Pro Rodeo in Hermiston, Oregon, picking up $10...

JoJo LeMond roped at four National Finals Rodeos before heading back to his family ranch in Andrews, Texas, to raise his kids with his wife, Blair. But the move home wasn't sunshine and rainbows for LeMond, and he's as real as it gets with how he made the transition out of full-time rodeo and into life as a cutting horse trainer. --- This episode is presented by Gold Buckle Horse Sales. Gold Buckl...

Leaving the box flat not only affects your start, it also plays a role in setting up the entire run. If your horse is squatting, their skewed balance can get you off balance. In this bonus  Roping. com tips episode of  The Short Score,   Trevor Brazile gives three tips for  leaving the box flat . Riding the famous stallion  The Darkk Side ,  Brazile  explains wha...

We're still not over the highest-paying rope horse futurity in history, the ARHFA Old West Rope Horse Futurity. In this final feature of the Old West futurity, The Short Score brings you conversations with  Clay Smith  and  Joseph Harrison  after their wins. Clay Smith  was the first $100,000 winner of the weekend, taking home the win in the Open Futurity Heading on Lead O...

The Team Roping Journal was all over the place this weekend, from the ARHFA's Old West Rope Horse Futurity in Wallsburg, Utah, to the Cheyenne Frontier Days short round. Miles Baker kicked off a historic weekend at the Old West Rope Horse Futurity, winning $50,000 in the Pre-Futurity Heading Thursday, July 25, on Relentless PYC . Baker talks about the mare they call Nala and why the win means so m...

Kenzie Mayer of Elite Equine Promotions is a master marketer in the team roping game, and our partners at The Money Barrel Podcast sat down with her to talk through the way the rope horse industry has stepped up their game in horse promotion. With The Money Barrel host Kayla Jones, Kenzie discusses how the rope horse futurity business has impacted marketing and how best to promote your own horses....

With the heart of the ProRodeo season in full swing, there's some catching up to do.  Erich Rogers and Paul Eaves picked up their second  California Rodeo Salinas titles  Sunday, July 21, 2024, with a 46.5 on five steers. All in all they pocketed $10,946 a man to push to No. 15 and 16 in the world standings.  Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira  added a new title to their r...

Martin Lucero had a storybook career, with 16 National Finals Rodeo qualifications and an NFR average title. He was a master of strategic entering, and he's still a resource for the young guys of the game. Lucero stepped away from full-time rodeo slowly, though, over the last decade, and in this episode of The Score, he explains why he called it a career and how he transitioned to life outside the...

From Cowboy Christmas, to the NFR Open, to Tate Kirchenschlager —we talk it all on this episode of  The Short Score. Cowboy Christmas 2024 is officially in the books, and  Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira  came out on top as team roping's top money earners. They crushed the record they set in 2022 of $35,152 a man by raking in $47,275 each this year. But  who else was inside...

Joseph Harrison  is an undoubted force in the futurity game, now having $476,934.27 in  American Rope Horse Futurity Association  earnings, as of June 28, 2024, making him the  richest roper  in the ARHFA game. Harrison joins The Short Score to talk about what it means to be the richest roper in the ARHFA and how to ensure a successful future in the rope horse and futurity...

There comes a point in every professional team ropers' career that the sacrifices rodeo demands don't quite feel worth it anymore. For three-time World Champion Jade Corkill, 2024 was the year he decided to step away from the ProRodeo spotlight and focus on his family. Corkill, however, has won nearly $80,000 in his time away from full-time rodeo in the first six months of the year, and he's enjoy...

Kolton Schmidt  has added a new mount to his  horse herd  in 2024: a bay mare they call Rhianna. Registered as  Carters Won Time Out , Rhianna comes to Schmidt from  A&C Racing and Roping , Rhen and Kaden Richard's top-notch  training program . Carters Won Time Out spent 2023 on the rope horse futurity scene with Rhen, picking up wins like the  6-&-Under...

Preston Burgess is teamed up with eight-time NFR qualifier  Cody Cowden  on the 2024 California Circuit front, and they've made some recent money moves to climb in their standings.  Burgess, a Hilmar, California, native, and Cowden have steadily climbed to fifth and third in the circuit standings after pocketing $6,718 a man between their average win at the Santa Maria Elks Rodeo Ma...

Memorial Day weekend is a time for us to honor and remember those who selflessly sacrificed their lives for our freedoms, and it's also a major jackpotting weekend in the team roping world. The best of the best enter across multiple Open ropings in the South, such as the Windy Ryon Memorial Roping, Cody NesSmith Memorial and the Danny Dietz   Memorial Classic, before they head out for the sum...

Kenna Francis and Whitney DeSalvo  had a huge week in Texas at the 2024  Women's Rodeo World Championship , pocketing $71,000 for Francis and $84,000 for DeSalvo.  Francis  and  DeSalvo  were one of three teams who made it through the WRWC tournament throughout the week inside Cowtown Coliseum and put an exclamation point on the week with a 6.62-second run in front of...

Champions were crowned May 11, 2024, at the  WCRA   Rodeo Corpus Christi . Winners of Corpus not only took home $15,000 and the coveted Rodeo Corpus Christi surfboards, but they also grabbed a spot on the WCRA Free Riders team in  Kid Rock's Rock N Rodeo  May 17, at AT&T Stadium. The 2023 Rodeo Corpus Christi champions  Riley Kittle and Jace Helton  returned to th...