Mika Tozer, of Cortez, has been roping since high school.<\/p>\n
She loves the sport, especially because it\u2019s an activity she does with her teammate, husband Hardy Tozer, a veteran roper.<\/p>\n
The skill set is a complex combination of horsemanship, athleticism, accurate roping and quickness, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot going all at once, a lot of practice and muscle memory,\u201d said Mika Tozer, whose job is to lasso the steer. \u201cA well-trained horse is a big part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Competitors are rated on a scale of four to a maximum of 15. Mika Tozer is at Level 9, and Hardy Tozer is at 13. Heats are arranged so the competitors are at a similar skill level.<\/p>\n
Who decides what level you are is a bit mysterious, Mika Tozer said. Basically, anonymous judges attend roping events and keep track of competitors\u2019 skill set. If they see you are improving, they bump you up a level. If you are ranked too high, your level will drop. The higher the competition level, the bigger the prize money.<\/p>\n
Winners of each level are the team with fastest accumulated time over all four rounds, John said. There was a $1,000 bonus for the team with the highest points in each event.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, there will be a goat roping event at the indoor arena, also sponsored by Tomahawk.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoat roping is big right now, come check it out,\u201d Claw said.<\/p>\n
Goat roping does not involve horses. Rather teams chase down the goats on foot, lassoing them and tying them up against the clock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Competitors take a break to talk about the sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28,1398,2105,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-livestock-farming","tag-montezuma-county-fair","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88102,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52531\/revisions\/88102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52531"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}