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Tyler Wade and Kinney Harrell’s aggressive style paid off big in Douglas, Wyo., when they needed it most. BY CHELSEA TOY

Tyler Wade and Kinney Harrell had won about $8,000 at the ProRodeos during the summer run when they pulled into the National Team Roping Tour in Douglas, Wyo., in August.

They’d had a great winter and at Reno were well inside the top 15. But they’d gone weeks without a single paycheck at the summer rodeos—and a week without money on the rodeo road is an eternity when you’re shelling out thousands in fuel, food and fees.

But pulling into Douglas, they were hungry for a good jackpot. The week before, they’d left their horses with some friends in northern Colorado and headed home. Harrell had some calves to check, and Wade just needed a break. They flew back to Denver a few days before the Wyoming State Fair NTR Tour stop and found their rodeo horses a little plump from the time off. They headed to the practice pen immediately.

The practice pen wasn’t too kind to them, though. Wade had swapped out jackpot horses that week, and was tuning up one of his mom’s barrel horses-turned-head-horses. Harrell was switching between his great horse Taz and his backup horse, and neither cowboy felt right.

“We both missed a lot more than we should have in practice the day before Douglas,” Harrell said. “Tyler was practicing on one horse for the horse, and one horse just for him, but it was two rough days of trying to get that rhythm that you’re looking for. We wanted the run to feel easy, and nothing was flowing together.”

After a long, hot day in the practice pen when neither roper caught very many steers, they were unsure of whether or not to head north for the roping or stay in Colorado for another day of practice. The jackpot was en route to the ProRodeo in Billings, and ultimately, they packed up their trailer and jumped on I-25 North towards Douglas.

“We got there the night before because we had heard we needed to get brand inspections and health papers to get into the fair,” said Wade, who comes from the non-brand-inspection state of Texas. “So we tried to get to the vet clinic, but it was closed. We sat there until 7 the next morning—the day of the roping—to wait for our papers, and there was a line of us there. Then, we got to the fairgrounds, and had to show the health papers and have our horses inspected to get the brand inspection. And then I didn’t have any bill of sale on my horse, so that was another mess. But finally, we got there just in time to get entered.”

The slack for the state fair’s ProRodeo was that day, too, so top circuit teams as well as top guys trying to make the Finals were on hand. Harrell decided he better stick with his great bay gelding, Taz, who had just a few weeks earlier won California Rodeo Salinas with Tyler McKnight aboard.

“There were a lot of good guys who showed up—Shawn Darnell, Dakota (Kirchenschlager), Paul David (Tierney) and Levi Tyan, Garrett Tonozzi, JD and Trey Yates and Blaster (Ty Blasingame),” Harrell said. “So we were dang sure glad we came. All the teams who had entered the slack at Douglas got in a few times, so we knew it was going to be a really good roping.”

Wade cinched up his jackpot horse, Fonzie, that he’d been working on in the practice pen for the two days prior.

“He’s fast, and he’s a lot of horse,” Wade said. “He does a lot better when he’s tired. With the practice before hand, I had him where I needed him. He’s not one you jump on and go. He’s a barrel horse—I bought him from my mom, she ran him.”

Wade and Harrell were the fastest out of the 66 teams on their first steer at 5.48, then another quick 6.33 on their second steer.

“I roped a leg on our third steer,” Harrell explained. “But it seems like we’ve had a lot of success with a penalty before.

Whether it be a leg or a 5-second barrier, we can fight through that and give ourselves an opportunity to win. We were running away with it, ahead of the pack by a ways. We were making less-than-rodeo runs but more-than-just-jackpot runs. He was getting out of the barrier really good. I made a mistake and roped a leg, but we had been aggressive enough to still have a chance to place coming into the short round.”

They came back to win the fast-time of the roping with a 5.05-second fourth-round run, and entered the short round second callback.

“If we rope aggressive and have to fight our way back, he’s one of the few guys I can fight my way back and win a roping with,” Wade said of his partner for the last two years. “I have a feeling if I break the barrier, I’ll head him a second or two faster than if I’d have gotten out. Some guys break out then run down there and free their horse up, and that’s just not me. If I break out, I usually go at him even harder. So then it’s really only like making up three or four seconds versus making up fi ve s e c o n d s.”

Their 6.23-second short-round run won them the roping, and the $4,065 a man, plus another $400 a man for their 5.05-second fast time run in the fourth round.

“It was one of the top 10 checks we won all summer,” Wade said. “There’s not very many times you can win $5,000 just roping steers. It was especially great in the summer when there are fewer opportunities to go to jackpots. We’re going to nothing but rodeos. We started winning $4,000 to $5,000 every week after that. We had some money in our pockets and it took the pressure off. ” While both cowboys surely would have liked that $4,465 in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world standings (they both finished the season just outside the top 15), the money helped them stay on the road for the rest of the year to pick up more paychecks to help them support their growing families. Wade married WPRA barrel racer Jessi Eagleberger on November 12 and Harrell and long-time girlfriend Nicole Walrod welcomed their second child, Kain Lincoln, into the world November 2.