Team Roping Competition

Sadly, I'm a little behind on my blogging. So tonight's post is from an event we went to on November 19. Paul found out about it when we were searching for a place to go horseback riding a while ago. He loves cowboy stuff, especially rodeo events. The team roping competition was at the Altus Expo Center (where the Jackson County Fair was). The contestants were randomly grouped into teams of 2 and competed for the best times. If you've never seen team roping before, I'll tell you the little I know. There are 2 people, a header and a footer, who try to rope a calf. The header throws the lasso around the calf's horns and the footer gets the back legs. The time doesn't stop until the ropes are pulled and the calf is "stretched" to indicate completion. Five points are added to the time if only one leg is roped. There are also penalties for starting too soon. The team with the best time wins. It was fun to watch and must be a lot harder than it looks. The cowboys on TV make it look so easy! These guys here, of course, were not professionals, so they missed more times than they succeeded.
My pictures are not great for two reasons. First, my camera ran low on battery, so I tried to conserve. Second, I started taking pictures on the "personal" setting and forgot about using my "manual" setting to change the shutter speed until half-way through. So the pictures are more blurry than I would have liked. If I had used a faster shutter speed, I think I would have clearer pictures. Oh well. You live and learn.




Here's a video. If you don't want to see a calf get roped, don't watch it.