Round 9:
5.4, split fifth and sixth in the round
Jake: Things are really starting to unfold. By now, the race is between Clay Tryan and Walt Woodard, Chad Masters and Allen Bach, and Clay and myself, and those other guys are out there quite a ways ahead of me. To me, this is a business and I've endured for many, many years. The ego part about going for first-those days are over for me. I try to be smarter than trying to win every go-round. I went to Clay and talked to him before we roped tonight about what he wanted to do, because we were in an interesting position. I agreed with what he said, which was that we've been about half a second off of winning a go-round the whole time. So to change things completely now would be crazy, especially on the really strong steer we had. We decided to keep playing our hand the way we've been playing it. We made our run, and placed in the round again. By now, what's going to make our week is winning first or second in the average. To get greedy and try to add a round to that was not smart.
Clay: Before we roped, Jake came up and asked what we needed to do. It was time to look at where we were in the average and consider things. We were still winning second in the average, and were 9 seconds out of first. But we were 10 or 15 seconds ahead of third. So Jake asked what I wanted to do, based on the world standings and all that. After we talked, I told him I thought we should just go rope our steer the same we had been doing. If we can place in the round, fine, but keep our spot in the average and not be crazy and take a chance on going out of the average. At worst, keeping our position pays $34,000. And I figured Walt and Allen were too far ahead to try to catch for the world. We had a steer that was really strong. He was probably our second worst steer. We went and made a good run on him, and won some money on him. Clay and Walt broke a barrier, and so did Chad and Allen. That changed the scenario to where we're two-tenths of a second out of the lead in the average.
Round 10:
5.8
Jake: Going into tonight, after Chad's barrier last night, we were two-tenths off the lead for the average, which left us in the same boat. We had another strong steer that hadn't had anything done on him all week. I wasn't about to do something stupid now. We were far enough ahead of third that a barrier or a leg wasn't going to move us to third, so I decided to take a downtown start. I got a good start, but the go-round had already gotten pretty tough, so I took another swing or two, got my tip down and roped that steer around the neck so I didn't risk popping it off. Clay came around there and made sure he caught him by two feet. Chad and Allen had the steer Clay and I had in the seventh round, and I knew he was strong and was going to be a handful for them. My strategy today was to make a good, solid, 5-something run to put a little pressure on them. I knew the steer they had was tough. He wasn't a gimme.
Clay: Going into the last steer, all we needed was a good run to win something good. We drew another strong steer, and all we needed to do was catch him for second in the average and $34,000. He wasn't an easy steer to work with. Jake got a good start and roped him around the neck, got his dally, his horse left there pretty hard and that steer was running. Things looked pretty wild when I was turning in there. My horse worked good and got into a good position. That steer took a good hop, I got a good loop in there and as soon as he went in it we came tight. We did what we set out to do, and what we had to do. Then all we could do was go up and watch the rest. They told us to stay close to the gate in case we happened to win the average. We were watching on the TV monitor right outside the gate. I don't know what happened, but when Allen came tight I saw he had a leg. So the realization hit that we'd won the average. The first feeling was relief. The second feeling was being thankful. It all came together at the end for a nice week. It was special to win the average with Jake-to experience that with my old buddy. It's really neat. It's a blessing and a gift to get to do that and be a part of it.
