Rodeo Road: Luck of the draw

Last week I was whining about being old and tired and telling you all about the drama and confusion of getting cowboys and cowgirls entered into a rodeo. I'm finally ready to tell you the rest of the story!

After spending 12 hours on the phone accepting rodeo entries for our Marietta rodeo, I was finally ready to "do the draw." Ever wonder how they determine which cowboy gets which one of these?

Or which cowgirl goes first in the barrel racing?

In rodeo, it's all about giving everyone a fair shake...so that means it's all the "luck of the draw." If you watch the PBR on tv, you might be familiar with what I'm talking about. If not, just hang with me.

First, I take my handwritten entries and put them in a spreadsheet. I keep a handwritten record of the entries, because you never know when technology might decided to fail you...in my experience it pretty much happens at the worst possible time. For me, that means my laptop is 100 times more likely to commit suicide while I'm taking rodeo entries fast and furious...as in I barely hang up and the phone is ringing again. Then there's lots of double checking and counting to make sure that I end up with the same number of entries in the spreadsheet as I had on the hard copy. I make a list of all the contestants for each event, assign each contestant a number and draw for positions.

But why? In this rodeo, for example, several contestants wanted in the perf (performance) - which is the "main" part of the rodeo - because they were from the area and had family and friends coming to watch. Others wanted in the slack. That's where we run all the extra entries. I mean, who wants to watch 35 team ropers in a row in the middle of a rodeo? No one. So we run around 10 in the perf, the rest go in slack. The goal is to finish the perf in 2 - 2.5 hours...'cause that's about as long as you (the spectator) want to sit there. Otherwise your cheeks will go numb, right? Anyway, some wanted slack because they were up at another rodeo earlier that afternoon and were trying to hit both in the same day. We draw for positions, honoring those preferences when possible to determine who goes when.

Aside from travel logistics and convenience for friends and family, there can be an advantage to specific draws. Barrel racers like to go first, or on the "top of the ground" because it's the tiniest bit faster before too many horses run and make the footing deep around the barrels. Ropers and team ropers often like to go later...it gives them a chance to see how the steers and calves run (fast or slow, straight or crooked....and they make notes on all this....trust me) and it gives them an idea how fast they need to be to "be in the money."

For example, if you're the first steer wrestler up, you might feel more pressure to make an early, riskier jump to catch and throw your steer. If you're last, and you know you only have to be under 8 seconds to place, you might not rush yourself so much and have a better chance of getting a good catch. Make sense?

And then there are the rough stock events: bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding and bull riding. We draw for those, too, although the order doesn't matter as much because the animals are "chute run" for these events. That means the animals buck in the order they are loaded into the chute and the order the animal and rider are ready - not a specifically drawn order. The important part of the draw for these events doesn't actually happen until they get to the rodeo. That's when we randomly draw numbers for each of the cowboys to determine which animal they will try to ride. It's always a fine line between an animal that bucks well enough to earn a good score (the animals are scored higher the more they buck) and an animal rank enough to throw you in the dirt and send you home with nothing but a sore bottom and imprint of a Wrangler patch on your butt.

So after the draw is complete, I then make up a fee sheet. In our rodeos, for example, each contestant pays a $45 entry fee to compete. That money includes $35 that goes into the jackpot (along with $300 added money), a $5 finals fee that goes to the sanctioning association to help defray the expenses of putting on their year-end finals, and a $5 stock charge. Instead of a $5 stock charge (which goes to the rodeo stock contractor), the barrel racers pay a $2.50 timer fee to cover the cost of using an electric timer that records times to the thousandths of a second and is automatically triggered when the horse crosses the start/finish line...it's awesome because it eliminates human error in the timing process for a super fast ans super competitive event.

I alphabetize the contestants, calculate their entry fees based on the number of events they compete in and double check their card numbers. Each competing contestant in a sanctioned rodeo must hold a membership (card) is one of the sanctioning associations or they must buy a single-day permit for that association ($20 in this instance). Time to double check all the numbers for events again and make sure everyone gets transferred to the fee sheet correctly and the numbers match up and double check the association's membership list. Print copies and you're ready for the rodeo. Stay tuned later in the week to learn about the chaos that takes place at the actual rodeo.