Published: July 13, 2008 01:14 am            

RODEO: Learning the ropes

Scotty Hartfield has been in the business of winning things since he was barely out of diapers.

Maybe it was time to find a way to haul it all around.

Whatever the reason, the 15-year-old Charlestown resident made the biggest score of his promising rodeo career on June 8 in Morristown, Tenn. Hartfield, who doesn’t even turn 16 until November, ended up as the high-point roper at the Smoky Mountain Showdown event.

And while the bragging rights were undoubtedly great, the real prize was a 2008 Dodge truck valued at $47,000.

“It was numbing at first,” said Hartfield. “I’ve won things before, but never anything like this.”

Few people have, but in the high-risk, high-reward world of team roping, the elite are often treated to large cash prizes, expensive saddles and other winnings that can stun those not in tune with the rodeo scene.

“Our family has had a great deal of success,” said Scott’s father, Jeff Hartfield. “We’ve taken maybe 35-40 buckles, seven or eight saddles and thousands of dollars in cash. We’ve been very lucky.”

Team roping, the sport in which the Hartfields have demonstrated such an aptitude, has been around for a long time, first becoming a standard event at the National Finals Rodeo in 1962. It has grown in popularity to the point that the United States Team Roping Championships, one of the sport’s two governing bodies, calls it the fastest-growing equine sport in the country.

The sport begins when a steer is released from a chute and given a 10-15 foot head start. At that point, the first roper — known as a header — throws the rope loop around the steer’s horns or neck. Once the steer is secured by wrapping part of the rope around the header’s saddle-horn, the header steers the horse around to one side of the arena.

The header’s partner, called the heeler, must approach the steer from behind and throw his rope around the steer’s hind feet, also wrapping his remaining rope around the saddle-horn to immobilize the steer and effectively end the run. That’s when an assigned flagger judges that the run is complete and stops the timekeeper.

Time is the most important aspect of the sport and the truest measure of superiority. Only the fastest teams continue to advance, although it’s not completely a partner sport. Each competitor is not bound to a certain partner, but competes with different partners throughout the event.

It isn’t a commonly-discussed sport, or one where its stars are considered celebrities like in other professional sports. But the prizes and awards are very real.

A month ago, it just so happened to be Scott Hartfield who ended up with the top prize, but he stresses that there is more to the sport than winning.

Indeed, Hartfield, who attended Rock Creek Christian Academy last school year and has also been home-schooled, believes that team roping has brought more to his life than a more traditional sport ever could.

“It’s all very normal to me,” said Hartfield, who has traveled all across the country for team roping events and has been to more places than most kids his age could ever hope. “I’ve met a majority of my friends at rodeos.”

Jeff Hartfield, a well-known name in the sport who ran a team roping event at Madison’s Saddle Up Arena in May that gave away a “modest” $18,000 in cash and prizes to a field of 350 teams, believes that rodeo is growing in popularity because of its emphasis on family. He says it’s a sport that holds up well in today’s America — which constantly struggles to find ways to keep families together.

“It’s a family sport, absolutely,” he said. “To compete, a family has to travel together. The expense of it often means that it’s tough for someone to go off on their own. I’ve seen guys who still travel with their 30-year-old sons, because it’s a lot cheaper. It’s very unique in that way.”

It was only natural for Jeff Hartfield’s success to become a family affair. He began with team roping in 1992 and began training Scott, then just 3 years old, in 1995. He also presided over an association for young rodeo participants, running events in Salem to help promote the sport and get kids the experience they need to win not just trucks, but the ultimate prize — a college scholarship.

Though unheard of in the local area, several Western schools sponsor rodeo teams, and it will be Scott’s next goal to earn a full ride to universities such as Texas Tech, Tennessee-Martin or even Murray State, the closest school to field a functioning squad.

Jeff Hartfield also stressed that team roping requires the same sort of commitment that is the best indicator of success in more mainstream sports. Along with his wife Jaime, Jeff long ago made the commitment to raise their children in the rodeo lifestyle, with all the hard work and expense that comes with it.

“This is what we do,” said Jeff, who estimates the family has around 100 roping cattle at their Double Hart Ranch in Charlestown. “It takes a great deal of self-discipline, and it’s worth it. You’ve got to have that extra something to keep going when it’s zero degrees outside and you’re still practicing, or when it’s 95 and the flies are all over you. We spend all our free time doing this, and we’ve gotten just as much out of it as we’ve put in.”

What they’ve also gotten out of it is a nice set of wheels. Jeff Hartfield said he had just bought himself a new truck, planning to give Scott his old one. Now, there’s a new plan.

“That one’s mine,” said Scott of his own new four-wheel drive Dodge.

Though that problem is solved, the only one left for Scott Hartfield is to figure out what’s next. But he thinks he’s got that figured out, too.

“The only thing I can think of for an encore is to go pro,” he said. “That’s what I plan to do.”

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.