ALVA, Okla. – A student’s education doesn’t end with graduation.
No, a good student is always learning, always craving a chance to be better. Even as his sophomore year has wrapped, Northwestern Oklahoma State University cowboy Colter Snook added a few more lessons to his notebook over the past week at the College National Finals Rodeo.
“I’ve just got to score better and need to stop being so danged afraid of the barrier,” said Snook, a team roping header from Dodge City, Kansas. “I was never once on the barrier and about half a foot off it on average.”
The barrier line is a rope that crosses the heading box and offers the steer the adequate head start. Being “on the barrier” means the cowboy and his horse are timing the start at the most opportune moment. In an event where times are separated by tenths of a second, every millimeter counts. Being late could be the difference between a good time and one, well, not so good.
Alas, breaking the barrier is also deficit, adding 10 seconds to a qualified time. All those factors play a mental game in a competitor’s mind. Add adrenaline and the pressure of the college finals, and there was a lot going on in the young roper’s mind, but he found success in spite of it.
Roping with Cale Morris of Western Oklahoma State College, the tandem stopped the clock in 6.2 seconds to finish in a tie for second place in the opening round. They were solid in Round 2 with a 7.0-second run. Things got a little dicey after that. Despite having a no-time in the third round, their two-run cumulative time of 13.2 seconds earned them a fourth steer in Saturday’s championship round.
“In that third round, I safety’d up a little bit. I had a good shot on my second swing, and I rated my horse off and took another swing,” Snook said. “I split the horns. If I would have just cut loose with it, I probably would’ve got them both covered.”
Both? Yeah, he’s referring to his final-round run, another no-time. Though Snook got a better start, he failed to secure the dally – team ropers use ropes not tied to the saddle horn like tie-down and breakaway ropers, so in order to tighten the line, they must wrap the ends of their ropes around the horn. By the time he gathered his dally, he, Morris and the steer were near the end of the tiny arena in Casper, Wyoming.
“I turned (the steer) right back around, but Cale’s horse had to turn completely around,” Snook said. “Cale hit the front leg.
“I just need to be sharper. If I break the barrier, it’s not the end of the world. I need to stop being afraid of it. Even if we’d broke the barrier on that third cow, it would have kept us in it.”
Senior Emmett Edler of State Center, Iowa, was in the mix in two events, tie-down roping and steer wrestling, the latter of which is his specialty. Edler won the Central Plains Region’s bulldogging title and finished second in the all-around race, therefore allowing him the opportunity to compete in a second event. Though he failed to secure a time in tie-down roping, he placed in the opening round of bulldogging with a 4.7-second run.
Fate stepped in quickly to halt Edler’s title hopes with a second-round no-time, but he rebounded with a 5.3 in the third round – he didn’t place among the top eight, but it was a solid way to complete his intercollegiate career.
Freshman goat-tier Payton Dingman took the educational aspect of the experience to heart. She stopped the clock on all three runs, with her best being a 6.7-second affair that earned her a top-15 finish in the third round. She finished 15th overall but gathered no points. Every run and every chance in the arena, though, built her confidence heading into her sophomore campaign.
“I really didn’t know what to expect going into it,” said Dingman of Pryor, Oklahoma. “I thought I had myself pretty calm about the whole situation, and it was a really great experience. Everybody there took me under their wing and just showed me all the places I need to go and where I needed to be. I learned a lot.
“I think in the first round, I went through every single emotion before I tied. Whether I was calm or nervous, I tried literally everything to get myself to calm down. I didn’t make a bad run; I made a little bobble worked through it.”
Her biggest hiccup came in the second round, when she posted a 7.9-second run to finish tied for 42nd out of 54 competitors. It was a bit of a speed bump, trying to do too much to be faster.
“Finally, by the third round, I felt like I was just myself again,” she said. “I just slowed down, tied the goat and just wanted it to be smooth, which is what I needed to do in the first two rounds. I just had myself so worked up to be so fast. Next year I know I just need to go in there and make a smooth run.”
The adage “slow is smooth; smooth is fast” comes into play because it calls for less thinking through the process and allowing athleticism and muscle memory to take over.
“I feel like every point that I’ve gone through, either at college rodeos or school, I’ve definitely learned something, especially from this experience,” Dingman said. “Now, I know how to control my nerves a little bit better and not just stress out so much.”