Whether you're a rodeo roper or a jackpot roper, amateur or hobby roper, one of the hardest things is learning to deal with your emotions, and more so the losing than the winning. It's an awesome feeling when you win. Besides the high you get when you're successful, those of us who rope for a living know our bills will be paid when we win. But you can't win every time, and you lose a lot more than you win. The guys who do this for a living have high expectations, and if you win 30-50 percent of the time that's doing something. I've never learned to deal with losing very well. Sometimes you don't draw good enough to win, and sometimes you don't rope good enough to win. But when you go somewhere thinking you're going to capitalize, it's a big letdown when you lose. And the bigger the event, the more it hurts.
Preparation and hard work make it that much more special when you do win. We strive to be the very best we can possibly be, and to capitalize at the major events. We set our goals at the start of the year, and we set them high-everything from winning at the big events to winning a world championship. Then we do whatever it takes to try to get there.
But no matter how well you prepare, you're going to lose a lot more than you win. So you have to learn to deal with your emotions. One time when I was roping with Allen Bach, we won the George Strait roping and over $100,000. Then we chartered to Houston, and a freaky break happened. Allen hooked his loop on the pulley on the calf roping side and it jerked his rope out of his hand to win Houston. We went from such a high four or five hours earlier to a crazy break that was devastating. That's the emotional roller coaster a professional roper has to live with.
