Another three years and three months later Dally was born.
“She loves to win,” Kay said of her only daughter. “She’s small for her age, she’s pretty quiet too. She’s a good helper for me in the house but she’s a cowgirl. Dally was never passionate about roping the way Quirt and Whip were but we just kind of made her. With our lifestyle you need to know how to rope and we weren’t going to be buying barrel horses.”
Five years later, Rowel, now 6, made his way on the Peterson scene.
“He’s pretty wild,” Kay said of her youngest. “Our goal is to not let him be the spoiled brat. He thinks he’s boss. He talks a lot and makes a lot of jokes, but he likes school, and for that I’m grateful.”
(I'm not sure if anything could throw him) and he settled his horse down quickly after this shot. He was the poster child of 1 Timothy 4:12, ‘Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.’ Quirt was that example!” “I wasn’t raised Christian,” Kay said, “but then I met Ace, and his mom. She was the main reason I became a Christian. I learned that it was the way I wanted to raise my kids.
Throughout my spiritual growth over the last 20 years I have witnessed little miracles that have proven it’s real.
Gone Too Soon “I like heading and heeling, both. On October 10, 2018, tragedy struck when Quirt When I’m struggling at one was involved in a ranching accident that took a talented young cowboy much too soon. News end I go to the other. It usually spread like wildfire throughout the Arizona and works.” - Whip Peterson
New Mexico ranching communities of which the Peterson family has been a part for decades. In the worst of times their impact was clear. People rallied support for the young ranching family with an online benefit auction that went “I would say my most-fun miracle to talk about viral. You could read for days condolences from is one from this past January. I was reading my people who had known and loved Quirt. morning devotional and it said essentially to “It's hard to believe that this young man ask God for something big. I always like looking has already been called up to ride with Jesus,” at pictures of Quirt and I thought if I could look Nick Robbs exclaimed in a post following his at his pictures without being sad that would untimely passing. “I met Quirt Peterson at our be amazing. A few hours later we went to our recent Rodeo Bible Camp where I took this church and I had this thought come into my picture of him (lower right). He didn't get thrown mind. ‘He moved.’ That’s so simple and I kept
thinking, he moved, he just moved. Maybe people are going to look at me like I’m crazy. I don’t care. If you believe what the Bible says, and we do, Quirt is alive, he just moved.”
The Petersons attend the San Simon Baptist Church which has an average congregation of about 20-25.
“That’s more than the Hachita Baptist Church, where there’s about eight,” Ace laughed. “We also have a little youth group the kids go to in Willcox every Wednesday night.”
National Champions Before kids, and when the kids were younger, Ace and Kay attended a lot of the ranch rodeos. As the boys got older, they started to team rope. It was something they could do as a family and they enjoyed attending NTR events in recent years—where Ace could rope with the boys and the boys could rope together.
Quirt and Whip had, in-fact, qualified for the 2019 National 8 Finale up and back. Ace was allowed to take Quirt’s place, but they had to move to the National 10 Finale.
“Neither one of us was roping very well,” Ace said, “We didn’t want to ask anyone else. We don’t have a lot of time to practice but we darn sure made a point to practice before the Finals.”
The father-son duo came back sixth-high call and had to wait it out. Whip has ice water running through his veins when it comes to short rounds.
“I didn’t think that we were going to place so I wasn’t worried,” he explained. “When it got down to the third high-call and I thought we had a chance, I was nervous then.”
