Roping in the best

ELLENSBURG -- Let's suppose you're a baseball fan. Imagine the world's best second basemen and shortstops coming to your town, bringing their families with them, and staying in their RVs right down the road from you for a couple of weeks. You could go out any day, watching from close range as they practiced turning double plays and even getting to chat with them in an atmosphere as casual and easy-going as spring training.

Pretty cool, huh? Well, let's suppose it gets even better than that.

Let's say you could, for a price, get to play infield with them, teaming up with Derek Jeter and trying turning to turn double plays faster than other pros teamed with fans just like you.

Well, that's happens every year for a couple of weeks at the WestStar Ranch outside of Ellensburg -- not with baseball infielders, but with the top ropers in pro rodeo.

It culminates today as it does every year -- on the day before the Ellensburg Rodeo's "slack" performance of timed-event competitors. First comes the popular Pro-Am Team Roping, in which amateur ropers partner with big-name pros, followed by open calf roping and open team roping events.

Last year's event "was just more fun than I can really describe," says Doug Barnes, an agribusiness salesman from Ellensburg.

"I follow rodeo, so these guys that I had an opportunity to rope with, I'm reading about them in magazines, following them on the Internet. These are incredibly talented people, and to be an amateur and be able to rope with these guys and have interaction with them, to learn more about what goes on in their lives on a daily basis, was very enjoyable."

And even in that relaxing setting, it's still quite big-time. These are the top performers in the business. Twenty of the 30 team ropers currently on pace to earning berths in this December's PRCA National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas -- marquee rodeo names like Trevor Brazile, Speed Williams and Allen Bach -- are competing in today's pro-am at WestStar.

At stake in the open calf-roping and team-roping events is $100,000 in cash and prizes; that's more than what will be won in those events at the Ellensburg Rodeo, beginning Friday evening at the Kittitas County Fairgrounds.

"The first year (2002), the payout for the winner was $5,000. Now it's $20,000," says Scott Repp, who owns WestStar Ranch with his wife, Jo. "We're proud of the fact that we've never taken a dime from the cowboys" -- beyond the entry fees, which go right back into the prize money, along with the spectator admission money -- "and don't want to, ever. We just put it on for their benefit."

Repp got the idea for hosting a roping event prior to the Ellensburg slack performance from a roping event put on by country music star George Strait in conjunction with the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo and a similar event organized in Reno by Ropers Sports News publisher Bob Feist.

Repp considered Ellensburg's central location among the spate of Northwest rodeos -- Kennewick, Bremerton, Lynden, Coeur d'Alene, Walla Walla, Ellensburg, Lewiston, Puyallup and Pendleton all run rodeos between Aug. 20 and Sept. 10. So he put on the 2002 roping, and competitors liked it so much that he went about making it their annual headquarters during that run of Northwest rodeos.

He put in electrical and water hookups in one of his fields, where the competitors could park their horse-trailer rigs, where their children could play in the grass and where their horses could graze at their leisure. There's a washer and dryer for the competitors' families to use in one of Repp's barns. Several times over the two weeks, the Repps invite the residents of their temporary RV community in for dinner.

"It can be 20 (guests) or it can be 50. They're kind of all over the house," Jo Repp says. "I think they enjoy being able to get out of the trailer. It's nice for them to be able to spread out."

The Repps don't gain financially from the experience -- if anything, they lose money, Scott says -- but they love the experience, largely because the rodeo community is largely populated by extremely decent people.

"They are so polite and so gracious, you don't have any feel that you're being taken advantage of," Jo Repp says. "They're all thank-you, and their manners -- maybe that's just the southern way, but everything is yes-ma'am, no-sir. And when they pull out to go to Pendleton, they're gone, and there isn't a gum wrapper in the pasture. They leave it impeccable. Not a can, not anything out there to pick up. I think that's their way of showing respect and a thank-you."

Many of the friendships outlast that two-week run at the Repps' ranch. Barnes, the commercial seed salesman from Ellensburg, became good friends with Keven Daniel, a professional roper from Tennessee who teamed with Barnes to win last year's pro-am event. The two have continued to speak fairly regularly over the phone, and when Daniel's truck broke down last month in Oregon, Barnes not only drove down to pick him up, he loaned the PRCA cowboy his own rig until Daniel's was back from repair.

"I don't need a rig to make a living, and Keven's making a living and trying to make it to the national finals," Barnes says. "These guys that are on the rodeo tour, it's a tough deal. They're going from rodeo to rodeo; sometimes they'll do 27, 28 rodeos in as many days. It's grueling."

While Daniel was using his rig, though, Barnes wasn't without a truck; a local truck dealer, Tom Luft, immediately gave Barnes a loaner off his lot. "And he wouldn't take a penny," Barnes says. "It's a little story of mankind helping mankind."

In the rodeo community, and in a rodeo town, that kind of thing seems to happen a lot.

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