Friends face off in Ranch Rodeo

By Celeste Calvitto, Journal correspondent | Thursday, February 01, 2007

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RAPID CITY—In a matter of hours, they would be competitors. Yet the camaraderie was clear among contestants in Tuesday’s Ranch Rodeo at the Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo.

Clark O’Donnell of Baker, Mont., and three of his friends — Lane Lamphere and Ryan Collins of Belle Fourche and Casey Holmes of Hermosa — gathered outside the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center arena, trading good-natured wisecracks.

“We’re a bunch of friends getting together to join forces,” O’Donnell, captain of the Post Angus Ranch team from Baker, said. Holmes would be on his team, but Lamphere and Collins would be competing on the National American University team.

Linked by their life’s work, 34 ranch rodeo teams from throughout the region participated in the afternoon preliminaries. By nightfall, nine would emerge to join three top teams from past years for the finals.

Ranch rodeo showcases the skills that cowboys hone in the wide-open spaces of the prairie. But for at least one team, there was another purpose for their participation.

The members of the K Bar J Leather Co. team had someone special in mind as they prepared for the preliminaries.

“We are riding in honor of (Rapid City resident) Becky Fincher, who is battling breast cancer,” said company owner Jack Gully of Newell, pointing to the pink shirts worn by captain Troy Crowser of Whitewood and team members Casey Kissack and Brandon Kudlock of Belle Fourche.

As the noon hour approached, longtime ranch rodeo judge Lonnie Hall of Meadow took the microphone at one end of the arena to address team captains as they geared up for the preliminaries. They had questions, and Hall had answers.

Combining wisdom and wit, Hall told them, “Read the rules, but don’t try to read something into them that’s not there. And don’t lose your temper — the sun still comes up in the morning.”

Hall likened his lecture to the locker-room “chalk talk” before a football game.

“You go over the rules and the regulations and the plays,” he said.

With a quiet eloquence, Hall encapsulates the essence of ranch rodeo — “this is the old American cowboy way of life” — as well as its unpredictability.

“It may not be the best team that wins, but the luckiest,” he said. The most skilled and experienced team can “go haywire,” while another whose members who have never worked together may mesh masterfully to overcome the confines of the arena.

“Out in the pasture, you’ve got all day long. Here, you have to beat the clock,” Hall said.

And the solidarity among ranch rodeo teammates extends to judges as well.

Hall and Lonnie Harrowa of Rapid City, Wade Vos of Caputa and Darrell Steffes of Vale serve as ranch rodeo judges. Asked whether they ever have disagreements, Hall had a simple answer.

“We don’t have instant replay, but we support each other’s decisions,” he said.