At 8 a.m. Monday, dozens of men wearing boots, chaps and cowboy hats (OK, no chaps, that’s just a rodeo song) sat on horseback in what seemed to be a sea of cowboys from Tucson to Tubac.
It was the Pro Rodeo circuit’s equivalent of the PGA Tour’s Monday qualifying tournament, but with a much better name — slack. Roughly 150 cowboys arrived at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds trying to earn one of the final 10 or 15 available slots into the finals of La Fiesta de los Vaqueros that begin Thursday.
Maybe it would be more accurate to name the PRCA’s weekly slack event the "No Slackers" competition. Those 150 team-ropers, tie-down ropers and steer wrestlers are trying to squeeze into a ridiculously talented field that includes world champion All-Around cowboy Stetson Wright and several of the famous Wright Brothers who are to the 2022 pro rodeo what Hall of Famers Jim Shoulders and Trevor Brazile were generations earlier.
As PRCA public address announcer Will Rasmussen said, "There is no room for error today, not even a fraction of a second."
This week's slack entries included two world-class team ropers: Pro Rodeo Hall of Famer Jake Barnes, a 1985, 1994 and 2007 world champion, and Matt Sherwood, a seven-time National Finals Rodeo team-roper.
Barnes and Sherwood seemed somewhat out of place in a large group of slack hopefuls, young guns with Cowboy-specific names like Cody, Clay, Colter, Cache, Casey, Cash and Clint.
None of them could’ve had any idea that the 62-year-old Jake Barnes has a legacy like no other at La Fiesta de los Vaqueros.
Exactly 90 years ago Tuesday, Barnes’ uncle, Jake McClure, won the 1932 La Fiesta de los Vaqueros calf-roping competition. Uncle Jake also won it in 1934 and 1935. Today, the 6-foot 3-inch Jake Barnes still looks fit enough to win here again, as he did in 1985, 2003 and 2004.
The Eastern New Mexico University grad, a 27-time NFR finalist who now lives near Reno, said he began to reduce his competitive schedule in 2015. "A horse fell on me and I suffered a brain injury and a broken ankle," he said. He also somehow survived a horrific 2007 injury when his right thumb got caught in his rope; his thumb was severed at the knuckle.
But you’d never know it now.
Barnes and his team-roping partner, Jaylen Eldridge, won Monday’s slack competition and will be in the field the remainder of the week. They were paid $3,950 each.
Shawn Musil watches a his steer gets away during the steer wrestling event on Monday.
Now, rather than travel to 60 rodeos each year, Barnes spends more time with his family and five children, which includes former Arizona State basketball player Bo Barnes. Once a winner, always a winner, right?
Sherwood, 52, also has a story of perseverance which is typical of almost all the cowboys and cowgirls in the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros competition.
After growing up in Snowflake, Sherwood qualified for the PRCA in 1994. He won world championships in 2006 and 2008, got married, has seven children and lives on a ranch in rural Pima, near Thatcher and Safford.
"I started out owning a flooring and tile company, Sherwood Flooring, in Queen Creek," he said. "But as I started to be more successful, I couldn’t compete in the rodeo and run the tile company, so we sold it and moved to Pima."
He has since earned $1.4 million in official money and much more off the PRCA tour, especially at special events such as the 2014 George Strait Team Roping Showdown in Texas, at which he earned $56,000 plus a new truck and horse trailer. He told the Team Roping Journal that before the George Strait rodeo, he was broke.
What’s the line from Strait’s epic song “Amarillo By Morning”? "I ain’t rich, but Lord I’m free."
Now Sherwood is both.
He has limited his competition in recent years, mostly to three high-purse events in San Antonio, Houston and Tucson. Sherwood spends much of the rest of the time running a chicken coop with his wife, Kim, on their Pima ranch, and as an entrepreneur.
Sherwood recently bought a 10-unit portable shower unit that he rents out, often to firefighter units on location in the West. He once pulled it from California to Colorado, an ordeal that can make the five or six seconds needed to win a PRCA tie-down roping event seem like cake.
But if anyone can tow a huge 10-unit portable shower unit, it’s a rodeo cowboy.
At the Tucson Rodeo Grounds on Monday, there must’ve been 30 or 40 super-sized horse trailers — such aptly-named models as "Bison" and "Eagle" — which not only include space for four horses, but also a smaller RV unit with a king-sized shower and queen-sized bed.
Those horse trailers cost as much as $100,000, and must be towed by those super-size pickups, double-cab, heavy duty power wagons. They, too, sell for close to $100,000.
Ty Everson wrestles a steer to the ground during Monday's slack event at La Fiesta de los Vaqueros. Everson scored a 6.6.
Cowboys like Barnes and Sherwood have spent years traveling from one rodeo to another, towing horses in power wagons from Texas to Tucson and back again, if only to avoid the uncertainty of slack competition.
On Tuesday, Sherwood failed to qualify for the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros finals, but as he pulled onto Interstate 10 for the short drive home to Pima, his legacy was secure.
Photographs from the 97th annual La Fiesta de los Vaqueros Tucson Rodeo by Kelly Presnell and Rebecca Sasnett of the Arizona Daily Star.
