LARRY GOSS & JOHNNY PHILLIPS
“This is the first thing I’ve won this year,” said Larry Goss, 70. “It feels pretty good. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do this anymore.”
Goss who hails from Redmond, Oregon, has been undergoing cancer treatment at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
“I’ve had a few different kinds (of cancer),” explain Goss, who wasn’t even sure he wanted to come to Arizona. “It was kind of a lark that I came. My wife told me that I should go because I might not get any better. She’s not one to pull punches so I came down in May and I’ve been getting practiced up at Ron and Kay Miller’s place.”
Goss and his Legends Championships partner, Johnny Phillips, had a mutual friend in Bill Phillips, Cody, Wyoming, (no relation) who encouraged the cowboys to team up.
“Bill asked if I wanted to rope with Larry Goss,” Phillips explained. “I said, ‘Who’s that? So, he can turn me a couple?’ Bill just looked at me and said, ‘He won the BFI John.'” In 1978 to be exact. He also made three trips to the NFR in 1966, 1973 and 1978 on the head side.
“I college rodeod too, and roped calves,” said Goss, who has also been involved in the horse business on the producer side. “My wife Barbara and I, we breed and train barrel horses. She rode hunters and jumpers before that, she ropes too. We’ve been involved in all phases.”
Goss won his split of the $10,600 aboard a 20-year-old racehorse, an own son of Juno Dat Cash, that was purchased from a Hawaiian princess.
“They pulled him from the track after he had a couple of wins,” Goss said.
“He lived in a round corral until my wife found him. We brought him home and rehabbed him and here we are.”
Phillips started roping in high school.
“It was kind of a second event for me,” explained the Casper, Wyoming, native. “I was a bronc rider but as I got older, I couldn’t ride broncs so went to team roping more and more.”
A semi-retired real estate broker who owns his own firm, Phillips and Company, he is a regular at many NTR events in Arizona and in the Northern region throughout the summer months.
While he was heeling in the Legends Championships, Phillips considers himself a header first.
“I usually head in the 10 or 11,” he explained. “I had planned to head in this deal but the guy I was going to head for was full so I made a last minute change that morning.”
Luckily, Phillips had brought along his heel horse, High Call, and the switch proved to be a lucrative one.
