ProRodeo Sports News - Oct.4, 2019

Team roping header ready to rope in Las Vegas IN HIS WORDS TATE KIRCHENSCHLAGER

I t’s exciting, real exciting. It finally feels like it’s going to pay off, all the long miles and all the money put into it. I don’t know if it’s sunk in fully, but it feels good. I think my mom wants to throw an NFR party in a few weeks. I have to go down to Texas for a few rodeos, so I don’t know when we’re going to do it, but I know my mom wants to throw a little get-together for everybody. Tyler and I have rodeoed a little bit together. A couple years ago we roped together in the winter, and the last four years or so, we’ve been best friends, practicing together in Stephenville. I bet we’ve run thousands of practice steers together. I think it’s a huge key knowing each other. Tyler can rope them so fast and gets them on a short rope. Hopefully I don’t have to throw very fast and will make sure to get out of the barrier and turn them, and he’ll make up the time. It’s nice knowing you’ve got somebody who can make up the time. It takes a lot of pressure off you. The win at San Antonio was nice. It went from hoping we could win enough to us knowing we could go all year. Everybody sets out to go all year and make the Finals. But it’s always in the back of your head that I hope we win enough so we can go next week and the week after that. But when you get a big lick like that (San Antonio), you’re hooked, you can go all year. It was a relief financially. It was enough that I knew I could go until Pendleton (Ore.).

Everybody knows how much it costs out here. It (winning $25,000) takes the pressure off having to win every time you nod your head. But at the same time, you don’t want to slow up any because those top six or seven headers every year, they win $35,000 one day, they’re liable to win $25,000 the next. Your Clay Smiths, Kaleb Driggers, they never let up. I’d say the only difference this season is I probably had the two best horses I’ve ever had all my life. They’re both sound and worked good from the first of the year all the way to the end of the year. And I had a bunch of support – from sponsors to family to my fiancée (Terra Micek). She put in as much work as I did. She deserves as much credit as I do. Terra and I are getting married June 6 next year. Between our horses, and I ride customer horses, I think we had 15 head of horses at all times when we weren’t rodeoing. She’d help saddle them, ride them, clean stalls. She was as much a part of it as I was. If you’ve got someone on your team all the time it helps so much. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d have had to hire somebody to help with that. But then I wouldn’t have had the emotional support out there on the road. It shows. Guys like Ryan Motes, he has a great wife. She supports him. Coleman Proctor is another. It seems like all those guys like that have someone in their lives, and I think that makes a huge difference.

Tate Kirchen- schlager will go to his first Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. The Colorado team roping header who turns 27 Oct. 11, earned $75,738 to unofficially finish 12th in the regular-season PRCA | RAM World Standings. Among his wins was the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo in February, when he hauled in $25,750 roping with Ross Ashford. Kirchenschlager will rope with Tyler Worley at the Wrangler NFR.

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ProRodeo Sports News 10/4/2019

ProRodeo.com

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