In The Arena

In The Arena

Bob Feist

Here it is already June and BFI time is upon us with a full week of roping in the Reno, Nevada area. If you are a team roper, you should be making your plans now to attend this year’s Bob Feist Invitational on Monday June 19th at the Reno Livestock Events Center. It is a day when you can come and see some of the best in the team roping world compete under tough conditions (fresh cattle and a long score) for the coveted Bob Feist Invitational title. This is the 40th anniversary of this event and the producers have gone above and beyond to make this year’s roping memorable to the ropers as well as the fans. The BFI lets one go watch the skills of the best over a long score with bigger hard running cattle. This year, the Wrangler BFI Week will feature many other ropings over a four-day period in the Reno Livestock Events Center all in conjunction with the Reno Rodeo which is one of the richest rodeos in the PRCA.

Sorry I haven’t had a column these past couple of months, with the main reason being that my ranch has been threatened by high water for the past 90 days and at one time it looked like we might have had to evacuate. Thank the good Lord that didn’t happen and hopefully with the His help, we will get by all of this snow melt and enjoy a nice summer. As many of you know, the main Ropers Sports News office is located on the ranch next to the Mokelumns River.

It has been a very wet January for the West Coast and incredible flooding which meant the moving of a lot of livestock and people to higher ground. We hope that all of you involved are doing all right and getting somewhat back to normal. The Mokelumne River, which runs through the ranch where the Ropers Sports News office is located, has been right at flood stage for some time now but is staying within the levees as of this writing. We welcomed the rain to help with the drought but weren’t quite ready for this huge onslaught at one time. Our great staff has entered up and have been doing a great job working through all the negatives of these winter storms.

Here it is the beginning of another year and team ropings and rodeos are already filling up everyone’s calendars. Many of us can remember when there was a “season” for roping, rodeo, barrel racing – but nowadays competition is year-round. Very little break after the champions in Las Vegas were crowned.

My Resistol hat is off to all the producers of the many events that took place during the first two weeks of December.